Rubin Tainted by Citigroup Downfall
If arrogance and hypocrisy were against the law, Citigroup Director Robert Rubin would be imprisoned on felony charges. In January, he told a group of New York academics that the mortgage loan crisis was something cyclical and that their would be no financial meltdown. As one observer wrote “the economic problems that he did acknowledge were blamed on just about everyone but the major U.S. financial players.”
A former Treasury Secretary Under Bill Clinton, Rubin has been with Citigroup since 1999 and has seen his company take on huge risks. This past January, his company had to write down $24 billion. Today, the Federal Government’s bailout of Citi could reach into the hundreds of billions.
With the current catastrophe unfolding under his watch, he has refused, according to the New York Times, to take blame for Citi’s ruinous greed-propelled risk. The Times points out that Rubin, along with Alan Greenspan “recommended that Congress permanently strip the CFTC of regulatory authority over derivatives.” Derivatives have been held by most analysts as the perpetrators of the current crisis- the very ones termed by Warren Buffet as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”
The catastrophes at Citigroup and other big firms have gone beyond their investors and clients to irreparably damage the position of New York as the world’s preeminent financial center. Strengthening Shanghai, Dubai, Singapore, and London at the expense of Wall Street will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions. It will also result in a critical loss of strategic “soft” power for the United States in an emerging multi-polar world.
Robert Rubin is no different than the Washington politicians he criticizes for being weak-spined, blame deflectors. Rubin should have no position with the Obama Administration and resign his position at Citi immediately. He has played an unfortunate and ongoing role in one of the greatest financial crises in history, one from which America may take a long time to recover, if ever.
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Collective Responsibility « DEAD MAN’S CURVE said this on January 30, 2009 at 11:44 am