On December 27th The New York Times ran a long piece by David Kocieniewski under the headline, "Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Rewards." The article constitutes an elaborate and somewhat indirect charge to the effect that two particular academics, Craig Pirrong and Scott Irwin, are sell-outs. Pirrong is a professor of finance at the University of Houston (that is his photo above) and Irwin is at the University of Illinois. Both gentlemen (I know Pirrong slightly, he's been a source of expert commentary for me on a couple of stories I worked on, and I like him -- take that as disclosure of bias if you like) -- both gentlemen are of generally free market orientation. This does not necessarily make them defenders of wall street, since much of wall street thrives as a consequence of very non-free-market activities. You can't really blame Kocieniewski for the headline., I guarantee he didn't write it. But he is responsible for the general slant of the ...