Andrew Sullivan: The Dog That Didn’t Bark — Just Where Is Bob Rubin These Days?

You might think that the Treasury secretary who presided over the now-bursting bubble might be a logical subject for some of the discussion out there right now. But: Nuh-huh. Like Waldo in a cartoon, Robert Rubin is somewhat invisible these days, lost in the lazy media impulse to blame whoever’s in power now. But think about it for a minute. Here’s a guy who poured cold water on Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” comments. Along with Phil Gramm, he helped kill legislation to make derivatives more transparent — and then he went to Citigroup the same year the bank engaged in a dubious scheme to keep Enron’s paper profits afloat. He’s widely synonymous with the boom that just went bust in a big and very bad way. Worth a reporter’s phone-call or two, wouldn’t you think? Nada in the New York Times (surprise!), the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal — or anywhere, as the story broke. Even liberals like Slate’s Tim Noah picked up on this weird lacuna.

Of course, Mr. Rubin hasn’t really been absent from the media these last couple of weeks. He has one of the best media rolodexes in the country and spends almost as much time as Colin Powell and Richard Holbrooke manipulating it. There was a piece in the Washington Post last Sunday on the financial crisis and its roots, but it wasn’t likely to ask questions about Mr. Rubin’s responsibility. Why? Because Mr. Rubin wrote it himself. I guess it saves time for financial reporters. Rather than get a reporter to translate Mr. Rubin’s views into a “news” article, the Post cut out the middle-man and got Mr. Rubin to do his own spin himself.

Or take Gloria Borger’s piece in U.S. News. She asked herself the good and important question: Was this Bubba’s Bubble? Just because the Nasdaq went up 80% in one year on his watch, just because interest rates stayed artificially low, just because his Treasury secretary kept talking up the markets, just because staffing at the SEC in New York collapsed in those years — none of that means President Clinton had anything to do with it. How does Ms. Borger know this? Because Mr. Rubin told her! “Blaming Clinton is absolutely ridiculous,” Mr. Rubin is quoted as saying in her piece. “We all have our faults, and Bill Clinton has his faults. But money and greed are not among them.” This follows the Clintonian device of asserting that the only impropriety or misjudgment in Mr. Clinton’s eight years was a sordid extra-marital affair. But that isn’t the point, Gloria. We’ve just gone through a wrenching boom-and-bust. Who gets the blame for letting the boom get out of hand in 1998 and 1999? “Corporate debt was up and so was the stock market. There had to be a period of adjustment,” Mr. Rubin tells Ms. Borger. “Who gets the blame? No one in particular, says Rubin.” No one in particular? Hmmm. Whom could Mr. Rubin have been thinking of?

Even if you buy the notion that the bubble was something the Clinton administration could not have done much about (although Mr. Greenspan is another story), isn’t the Mr. Rubin angle noteworthy? He has already conceded he placed a call to the Bush Treasury Department, floating the idea of an Enron bail-out before the company’s collapse. His own bank, Citigroup, is now being investigated for constructing a phony pre-pay scheme to hide Enron’s losses in 1999. He was the most senior administration official in charge of the economy when the boom reached its crazy peak. Wouldn’t this disqualify him just a little bit from being regarded as neutral on these matters? Wouldn’t it even require some reporters to put in a couple of qualifiers to his comments? Nope. Who do they think he is? Mr. Powell?

Didn't Rubin work for Goldman Sachs before beinh Clinton' man? Didn't Goldman Sachs underwrite (and thus profit greatly) from huge loans to Russians through the IMF??

I suspect you already knew this but it bears repeating.

From: IMF deserves no credit by John Laughland. (1998 article)

Foreign investors are already benefiting:60 per cent of the $6.4bn worth of GKOs converted into dollar Eurobonds went to them. As lead manager for the deal, Goldman Sachs is expected, in one fell swoop, to cash in more profit than all German banks have made together in Russia since 1991. Some Republican pressure groups have been quick to point out that the partners of Goldman Sachs were prominent among the list of donors to President Clinton’s election campaign, while the US treasury secretary is one of its former partners.

Clinton helped Russia pay back it's debt by cutting OUR oil production. In effect, we American drivers helped pay off Russia's debt when we bought gas at those tremendously high prices last year. Clinton engineered oil crisis last May [ie, May 2000] Co-incidentally Rubin's former employer Goldman Sachs benefitted, when it didn't lose all the money it invested.

A summary of Rubin's career from a Citigroup web page about its business heads.

Robert E. Rubin is a Director, a Member of the Office of the Chairman of Citigroup Inc., and a member of the Citigroup Management Committee. He has been involved with financial markets and our nation's public policy debate all his professional life.
Mr. Rubin began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs & Company in New York City in 1966. He joined Goldman as an Associate, became a General Partner in 1971 and joined the Management Committee in 1980. Mr. Rubin was Vice-Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer from 1987-90, and served as Co-Senior Partner and Co-Chairman from 1990-92. Before joining Goldman, he was an attorney at the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City.
Mr. Rubin, long active in national and New York City public affairs, left the private sector in 1993 to join the Clinton Administration. Beginning with the President's inauguration, Mr. Rubin served in the White House as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Directing the activities of the National Economic Council (NEC), Mr. Rubin guided the newly created NEC as it oversaw the Administration's domestic and international economic policymaking process, coordinated economic policy recommendations to the President, and monitored the implementation of the President's economic policy goals.
Upon the retirement of his predecessor, Lloyd Bentsen, Mr. Rubin was President Clinton's choice to serve as our nation's 70th Secretary of the Treasury. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office on January 10, 1995.
As Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Rubin played a leading role in many of the nation's most important policy debates. He was involved in balancing the federal budget; opening trade policy to further globalization; acting to stem financial crises in Mexico, Asia and Russia; helping to resolve the impasse between the Congress and the Executive Branch over the public debt limit; safeguarding the nation's currency against counterfeiting; introducing inflation-indexed securities; strongly responding to issues at Treasury's law enforcement agencies; and guiding sensible reforms at the Internal Revenue Service. He left Treasury on July 2, 1999.
Mr. Rubin now serves as Chairman of the Board of the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC). LISC is the nation's leading community development support organization with 41 offices nationwide. At the White House and Treasury, Mr. Rubin was a leading advocate for policy actions that met the need for economic development in the nation's distressed urban and rural areas.
Mr. Rubin joined Citigroup on October 26, 1999, where he participates in the strategic, managerial and operational matters of the company. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Ford Motor Company. In March 2000, he became a member of the Advisory Board of Insight Capital Partners, a New York-based private-equity investment firm that specializes in e-commerce business-to-business companies.

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Liars-- and Sleaze, Incorporated... ( my files on the clintons and friends )

Andrew Sullivan Wonders Why Questions Aren’t Being Asked of Clinton’s Treasury Guru