Citigroup, Rubin, Summers & The Courage to Change
51He's Got What It Takes
Blowing-Off the Superstars
There once was this gigantic Financial Services company.
Not long ago it had a market capitalization of $270 billion.
It has assets of $2 trillion.
Its market capitalization has shrunk to something like $25 billion.
Over the weekend, this Financial Service company became a ward of the State.
Its name is Citigroup.
It had a Senior Adviser; what he was/is paid, I do not know how much.
But I do know his name: Robert Rubin.
With his "senior advice", Citigroup is now a subsidiary of the US Treasury.
President-elect Obama has a Senior (Economic) Adviser as well.
And I know his name too: Robert Rubin.
Robert Rubin was Secretary of Treasury during the Clinton Administration and had a brilliant protege who succeeded him.
I know his name: Lawrence Summers.
President-elect Obama has chosen his Senior White House economic aide.
And his name is Lawrence Summers.
Mr. Rubin and Mr. Summers worked together to pass legislation permitting commercial banks to engage in activities that they had been barred from since the Great Depression.
Some argue that one of the root causes in the crisis facing our commercial banking system (and now the world economic system, in toto) is the legislation resulting from Mr. Rubin's and Mr. Summers' efforts.
My wish for the success of Barack Obama is second to no one's.
But his "newness" to the Power Scene may already be showing.
Even a President-elect, I imagine, would find it difficult to blow-off economic Superstars like Rubin, Summers, Volcker...But blow them off he will eventually have to, if ever he hopes to reverse the trend initiated by the names in bold in this post.
Just as these guys killed the economy, so too will they kill Barack's Presidency.
[This article was first published several minutes ago on my blog on www.barackobama.com.]
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Comments
Larry Summers is an arrogant jerk and a free market ideologue. I had thought better of Rubin until he became vice chairman of Citigroup which, along witht the Mafia, is one of the great criminal enterprises of our time. I say that after a couple of bad experiences with their credit card people. involving grossly excessive charges by their credit card people. I read somewhere recently that while Rubin tends to be cautious, Summers leans toward stronger action. This is what we need at the present time. All we can do is batten down the hatches and hope for the best.
Every Obama appointment makes the knuckle draggers elsewhere in HubPages who are crying "Socialism!" look more ridiculous.
vitaeb & Ralph,
Thanks for the comments.
One can only wonder if the candidate whose mantra was Change had pre-announced during the campaign that, if elected, he would re-incarnate the staff and Cabinet of Bill Clinton, including--shudder--his wife and populate his Administration of Change with them.
There is an underlying irony that the Repubs have the audacity to try to pin the Socialist tag on Obama at the very time their own Republican President has authorized the largest government intervention into the private sector in the history of the country.
These are strange times indeed, but to me the eeriest aspect of what's going on is how thoroughly undemocratic, cloistered almost, the process is. Every day Fiats come down from the Treasury or the Fed, Fiats totaling upwards of $7 trillion of public funds and counting. Where in the hell is this money going? It sure hasn't gotten to anyone I know.
FB
vitaeb says:
13 months ago
Thanks for this clear and succinct statement. It does seem alarming doesn't it? I would love to hear Obama's reasons for giving these guys his ears. What will they be advising him to do, I wonder? Are we still on the same old merry-go-round? If Hillary had gotten the presidency, who would she have picked for these advisory positions? We'll never know, of course. So, for now, I hold my breath and wait. These are crazy, unsettling times, everything going topsy-turvy. This drama is being orchestrated by forces beyond our ken, including the ken of those who purport to 'know.'