"It is probably worth noting that playing the role of an Erskine Bowles and spreading confusion about basic economics carries large financial rewards. According to the New York Times, Erskine Bowles gets paid $40,000 for many of his speeches.
In addition, Bowles has collected millions of dollars sitting as a director on corporate boards. Perhaps most notable are the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he pocketed as a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the too-big-to-fail banks that would have gone bankrupt in 2008 had it not been saved by the Fed. He also was pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars as director of General Motors until it actually did go bankrupt in 2009."