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Rubin's poisoned chalice
AsiaTimes online ^ | May 21, 2008 | By Henry C K Liu

Posted on 05/21/2008 6:26:36 AM PDT by OpusatFR

More than two years after the October 1929 stock market crash and in the depth of the ensuing depression, a commission originally established by the Republican-chaired Senate Banking and Currency Committee to prepare the party's official defense for the upcoming presidential election finally began in March 1932 to examine the causes of the market crash and to recommend reforms to prevent future recurrences...SNIP...

The implosion of Rubinomics It was Robert Rubin, special economic assistant to Clinton and later Treasury secretary, who worked out what has come to be known as Rubinomics, the strategy of dollar hegemony through the promotion of unregulated globalization of financial markets based on a fiat dollar that also forced deregulation on the US financial market. (See US dollar hegemony has got to go, Asia Times Online, April 11, 2002.)

(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: clinton; federalreserve; monetary; rubinomics
This is a five part analysis.
1 posted on 05/21/2008 6:26:37 AM PDT by OpusatFR
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To: OpusatFR

So many Clinton appointees, sowing seeds of destruction - Gorelick, Raines, Rubin ... but then, no one appears to have cared enough to change course afterwards, so it’s tough to make a partisan case.


2 posted on 05/21/2008 6:48:15 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: OpusatFR

I hope there’s something worth reading in the other parts. This one is best described by the word “turgid”.


3 posted on 05/21/2008 7:08:05 AM PDT by devere
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To: OpusatFR

Mr. Liu is an admirer of the Chinese Communists. Here is a choice quotation from his website:

“Chairman Mao Zedong, the greatest revolutionary in modern Chinese history, has been unfairly vilified by the neo-liberal West, but he set a decaying China on the path to renewed greatness and provided a vision for a new China that will survive for centuries to come. In fact, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, is deified, while Mao is demonized. Lincoln’s assault on due process was decidedly more violent than Mao’s alleged autocratic leadership style. The difference between Lincoln and Mao is that Lincoln’s high-minded quest for equality in practice allowed a few to monopolize the resultant national wealth, while Mao tried to distribute it to all equally.”

I now reaclall that I’ve run into this guy before on another website, and in my opinion nothing he writes is worth reading.


4 posted on 05/21/2008 7:21:15 AM PDT by devere
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To: OpusatFR
This is quite an elaborate piece... I haven't printed or read the previous 4 pieces but I've printed and am reading this one.

Just have to point out one "money quote" here deep in the article:

President Roosevelt appointed Joseph P Kennedy as first SEC chairman. Kennedy was a highly successful speculator on Wall Street with a wide network of business dealings, some of which were questionable, whose appointment Newsweek described as "a former speculator and pool operator will now curb speculation and prohibit pools."

5 posted on 05/21/2008 7:39:36 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds ("The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.")
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To: OpusatFR

OK, I’ve now read (in some parts “scanned”) this because it is somewhat unreadable. I find the jumping from depression to 2007-8 liquidity crisis to the formation of GM and the beginning of the Progressive era — all a bit jarring.

I agree (I think) with this guy’s premise that there is great potential hazard facing the country and the world tied to our fiat money system(s), but much of the foundation for this guy’s thesis is foolish utopianism: the primary role of government should be the the equitable sharing of wealth? That’s where he lost me. And I doubt I’ll try reading the introductory 80 pages that must precede this piece.


6 posted on 05/21/2008 8:18:43 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds ("The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.")
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To: OpusatFR

Asia Times.com is a winner.


7 posted on 05/21/2008 8:19:44 AM PDT by aculeus
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To: OpusatFR

The vessel with the pestle
has the brew that is true.


8 posted on 05/21/2008 8:52:30 AM PDT by DGHoodini ("I never did believe you much, anyway...")
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To: OpusatFR

Robert Rubin helped create the recession in 2000-1 and was not blamed at all. He was lionized.

And then he took over at Citigroup and he has driven that company into the ground. At least he will avoid being lionized this time since there is no Republican he can turn the mess over to. But there is no evidence yet that the media has recognized that Rubin is a bubble waiting to burst as a manager.


9 posted on 05/21/2008 9:33:10 AM PDT by bpjam (Drill For Oil or Lose Your Job!! Vote Nov 3, 2008)
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To: devere
devere - Mr. Liu is an admirer of the Chinese Communists.

From Liu's follow on article titled: THE SHAPE OF US POPULISM, Part 6 The birth of the New Deal

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE22Dj05.html

. . . When the economic value of socio-economic safety nets in private market economies is recognized, planned collective economies tend to perform better, particularly if equality is assigned reasonable monetary value to reflect its economic value.

He does need to be read with the understanding of who he admires. Not sure I would say nothing he writes is worth reading. Especially when the Democrat front runner, Obama, is closer to a Democratic Socialist vs. classic liberalism

10 posted on 05/21/2008 9:44:19 AM PDT by mpreston
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To: mpreston

“...Especially when the Democrat front runner, Obama, is closer to a Democratic Socialist vs. classic liberalism...”

Exactly. Considering Obama is a one term senator wtih no experience, no voting record per se, and no policy that I can find in his platform, one looks to his backers: Dick Durbin and the socialist/Marxists in congress and Soros, his money man.

I read Zbigniew Brzezinski is the architect of Obama’s foreign policy platform and articulates his vision in his book “Second Chance: Three Presidents and The Crisis of American Superpower.”

Jimmy Carter redux or something much worse?

Obama is a puppet going to dance to entrenched ideology. That’s frightening.


11 posted on 05/21/2008 11:15:13 AM PDT by OpusatFR
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To: DGHoodini
They broke the chalice from the palace.
The flagon with the dragon has the pellet with the poison.

-PJ

12 posted on 05/21/2008 11:22:21 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too (Repeal the 17th amendment -- it's the "Fairness Doctrine" for Congress!)
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To: Political Junkie Too

No no no!

The vessel with the pestle
has the pellet with the poison
Th Flagon with the Dragon
has the brew that is true!

:oD


13 posted on 05/21/2008 6:47:17 PM PDT by DGHoodini ("I never did believe you much, anyway...")
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