Geithner, Summers, Orzag, Daly, Jack Lew...the list goes on and on. Robert Rubin puppets, all.
No single individual has had an imprint on American economic policy over the past 20 years more than Robert Rubin. And the man put together an unblemished record of blowing up everything he touched: From Citigroup to the US economy with his late 1990s surpluses (which we're still trying to recover from) and as an encore, the entire global economy with his single minded pursuit of financial deregulation and derivatives.
Rubin is still with us, behind the scenes perhaps, but very active nonetheless by way of his puppets who continue to press for deregulation and "fiscal responsibility."
I recently saw the Puppeteer himself at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, having lunch with none other than Pete Peterson (another financial robber barron who's been gunning for an end to Social Security for decades and is likely to get it) and--you guessed it--Timmy Geithner, who looked like he was obediently taking orders from his two masters.
But it's the President who has become Rubin's main act. The Puppeteer has taken Obama's message of change and deftly crafted it to Wall Street's interests.
Yeah, Dean Baker has their number (and I hope Geithner picked up the check since Rubin lobbied hard for his appointment instead of Paul Volcker).
ReplyDeletePeter Peterson and Robert Rubin are both enormously wealthy men. (They joked about dividing their lunch tab based on their net worth.) They are lecturing the country on the need to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for retirees who have a tiny fraction of their wealth. Many of the victims of the cuts that they would push are people who are already struggling... However, it would be hard to find two people who have benefited more from taxpayer handouts than these two individuals.
http://www.ourfuture.org/progressive-opinion/2010041728/being-rude-deficit-hawks
I don't like Rubin or Peterson's ideas on Social Security, but Peterson was certainly correct in his book "The Gray Dawn" about world wide demographics and the boomer bubble working its way through the world's economy right now. Is there anyone else out there that has their eye on the demographic problem?
ReplyDelete