[jim_greco]

Yellen has worked at the Fed forever and knows how to speak to private citizens. She's not going to leak her press conference material because her old boss called her up.

Your two links are 1) Outright insider trading 2) An unrelated example where perhaps you do want to look at revolving door rules.

[crdb]

That's not what I meant (e.g. Bernanke influencing Yellen), I guess I was not clear enough or the subtleties were lost in translation. The examples are simple, obvious cases of the more subtle fears one could have about public officials moving to the private sector. Influence is not by phone calls asking for things (unless you are really stupid, as Rajaratnam's circle seemed to be) but by cautious alignment of interests and game theoretic considerations (a la House of Cards). You don't ask the CFO how his company is doing; you have someone in your team take him for frequent drinks and lunches and to clubs and get to know him well, and then wait for "mosaic" pieces when he's had too much to drink...

As a more subtle example, some Austrian economists argue (and I can't remember the books off the top of my head) that Keynes' policies were influenced by what politicians and the academic elite of his era wanted to hear; this allegedly enabled Keynes to become the first "superstar" economist with significant personal advantages, in exchange for providing backing for policies that classical economists would not want to touch. (Others might argue that Keynes, as an all-but-by-name Fabian, was thus inclined in the first place and didn't need prompting.)

This is the real risk: when the interests of people close to government start influencing government actions, not necessarily outright or implicitly, but with the same effect on the stakeholders (the governed).

Without wanting to step into a hornet's nest, a more obvious recent example is the way the interests of Mr. Cheney aligned so nicely with the case for war in the Middle East a decade ago. Some argue that, even if the war was justified, the lack of any kind of open bidding process for contracting during the period would be concerning as regards the judicious use of taxpayer money.

From my relatively few and junior years in the global macro space, I didn't get a feel that Bernanke would be a particularly egregious case of this; he struck me as an honest man and competent academic (even if I'm not a fan of his policies); as for what it's worth, seemed Trichet. But it's a discussion worth having because not every departing civil servant is motivated by academic immortality or policy legacy.

Well, I never had a particularly brilliant P&L and eventually left the industry, so maybe my opinion is not worth much.