Michael Lewis: Why Doesn't Rubin Trust You With His Thoughts?

Bloomberg ^ | Jan. 16 , 2004 | Michael Lewis

[presidio9]

In his newly published memoir, Robert Rubin recalls the day in October 1997 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 554 points. He was U.S. Treasury secretary, and a lot of people felt he should come out of his office and say something, but really he didn't want to.

[maro]

What else is Rubin going to do except work in the financial sector? This is what he does; he's good at it; it interests him. The money is besides the point. Henry Miller? I assume that was, at some level, a joke.

[malia]

This is way out of my area of knowledge, but--

Does this mean if you say nothing, then nothing can come back to haunt you. Rubin, ignoring the '97 & '98 market drop meant it didn't happen OR maybe he DID know why, and continued the pretense that the U.S. Treasury had a 'strong dollar' policy, when it did not, and never did - as we now know!

How can you expect corporate ethics, when you and the people you work for have no ethics - as we now know!

The media does not do its job in serving all the people!!

[Sonny M]

Running Goldman, Sachs & Co. in the late 1980s, Rubin watched one of his best friends, Robert Freeman, hauled off the trading floor in handcuffs by Rudolph Giuliani's storm troopers.

A nazi referance for bringing in a crook? What the hell kind of garbage is this?

[Sonny M]

How can you expect corporate ethics, when you and the people you work for have no ethics - as we now know!

Its been rumored that Rubin used to say, or tell people to think about what there words will look like in print before they say anything.

He apparently believed it, if you ever see him, in a "Q and A" segment, after somone asks him a question, he'll pause for awhile, leaving ackward moments of silience before answering in a bland greenspanish kind of way.

[maro]

That was in the article; I didn't say that.

[Sonny M]

That was in the article; I didn't say that.

Sorry, it was a general post and I posted it to you by accident.

Still, do you think the author was still screwed up for even saying that?

[maro]

Too many people use Nazi metaphors too lightly. As for Giuliani's prosecutorial style--I think he went too far in some cases. Milken was not really guilty; he was not in the money establishment, he had new ideas, and that's why he was brought down. That and Rudy's political ambition. But all prosecutors are ambitious. Look at Spitzer in New York.