Marshall Auerback — Another Rubinite to the White House?

First, we had Treasury Secretary Jack Lew (whom Rubin made a very wealthy man at Citigroup). And now we find out that President Obama has nominated Walmart’s philanthropic head Sylvia Mathews Burwell to become director of the White House budget office. She touches all of the right bases: a McKinsey alumnus, and served as Rubin’s chief of staff from 1995 to 1997, when she moved back to the White House to serve as one of Clinton’s two deputy chief of staffs, the other being future Center for American Progress founder John Podesta. Podesta and Burwell worked under chief of staff Erskine Bowles, he of Bowles-Simpson fame.

So what’s wrong with having people in the White House who are familiar with the way the capital markets work? Well, yes, they are all “markets people”, who just happened to be around during the time of one of the greatest private sector debt bubbles in history and still fail to recognize the destructive dynamics unleashed by that. It’s as if I went a surgeon who amputates the wrong limb. Should I therefore go back to him for a 2nd procedure on the grounds that he might be more familiar with my body than other doctors?

Macrobits
Another Rubinite to the White House?
Marshall Auerback

(h/t Kevin Fathi via emial)