Thursday, February 7, 2008

Rubin Said What? And He's Not Worried?


Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now chairman of Citi, doesn’t seem all that worried about the banking crisis either. Rubin told a crowd at Manhattan's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art last week, reports Fortune magazine, that “The problems now roiling the markets and forcing the Federal Reserve into a defensive posture are ‘all part of a cycle of periodic excess leading to periodic disruption,’ and that we are not, in fact, on the verge of a financial meltdown.”
Instead, he blamed politicians and consumers for not understanding the mess we’re in. “Part of the problem,” wrote Fortune, explaining a point Rubin also made in our interview with him for I.O.U.S.A., “is that we need a ‘more educated electorate’ to hold politicians accountable. Without that, the U.S. won't be able to overcome long-term economic challenges, like the troubles surrounding Social Security and budget deficits, or the new problems created by globalization.”
“It’s really not that difficult,” Rubin concludes in our movie. “The old saying ‘There is no free lunch’ is true”… in politics as much as it is true for the national economy.

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