Conflicts of Interests and an ethical code for economists

We recently discussed in class the MBA oath. Now, the NYT reports that the American Economic Association, the world’s largest professional society for economists, founded in 1885, is considering a step that most other professions took a long time ago, namely, adopting a code of ethical standards. Apparently, this is a reaction to a documentary film released in October - "Inside Job", watch the trailer above - that excoriates academic economists for their ties to Wall Street.
“You could call this the ‘Inside Job’ effect,” said David H. Autor, an M.I.T. professor who is a nonvoting member of the committee but had not heard of the proposal. “Certainly the implication of the movie was that people were selling their academic reputations to further the interests of moneyed individuals and institutions.”
The film is particularly critical of R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School and a director of MetLife; Frederic S. Mishkin, a professor at the same school who advises investment firms; and Martin S. Feldstein, a Harvard professor who resigned from the board of the AIG after it was bailed out by the Fed and the Treasury. They have held top posts: Feldstein was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan and Bush and Mishkin was a Fed governor.
The question is whether economists should be required to disclose (and how) who finances their research, which corporate clients they advise, consult for or give speeches to. And even whether they should be allowed to serve as corporate directors and officers, as many business and finance professors do.
Robert E. Lucas Jr., a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, said universities are better suited to handle the matter: “It’s good to get this stuff out in the open, but I don’t like the idea of the A.E.A. watching over this. What disciplines economics, like any science, is whether your work can be replicated. It either stands up or it doesn’t. Your motivations and whatnot are secondary.”
Of course, we disagree.