How has the greed of "CEO/CFO" (COO, CIO... any other Cs?) manifested itself? How did you remove all other explanations for the decisions made by the executives to arrive at this conclusion? How many CEOs do you personally know? At how many meetings have you been present to observe the alleged greed in action?
How has "Rubin's Tresury" benefited from its "greed." What specific wealth has Rubin pocketed as a result?
Much of what happened in the 1990s also happened in the 1980s. Here's hoping we don't do it again.
Julia Homer, CFO Magazine October 01, 2002
"Rubin, secretary of the Treasury from 1995 to 1999, is no longer in government. He is a director of the Citigroup financial conglomerate. Rubin is the ne plus ultra of eminent Clintonians. Indeed, after Alan Greenspan, he is the most respected figure in international financial markets.
"The casual reader of the business press might assume that Rubin, whose firm is a major lender to Enron, asked Fisher for the same thing that Kenneth Lay asked Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for: a bailout, some form of government financing. Not so — the request was both more subtle and potentially more damaging to the good health of America's markets. What Rubin asked for, by all accounts, was for Fisher to call the debt rating agencies and ask them to find an "alternative" to a downgrade of Enron's securities. (As a lender, Citigroup was bound to be injured by a downgrade.)
"This was an astounding request. The rating agencies are meant to be neutral arbiters of the financial strength of the entities they rate. The request Rubin made of Fisher was akin to the owner of a team faced with playoff elimination calling the league commissioner and asking him to see if he can get the referees to call the next game so that the owner's team doesn't lose. This request was coming from the man who personified the Clinton-era financial establishment. Rubin reportedly prefaced his request to Fisher with the phrase, "This may not be the best idea, but..." Students of Watergate will recall that Richard Nixon once instructed his subordinates in how to gather hush money for the Watergate burglars, then ended the explanation with the phrase, "But it would be wrong." Nixon later pointed to that sentence as evidence of his innocence. Plus ca change."*
"Only last week, as the bill was being pushed through a congressional conference committee, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers rushed back from a trip to China to huddle with lobbyists representing Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other financial giants. The meeting was closed to the media and public, but one participant told the New York Times that Summers lectured the lobbyists on how to spin this bill so it appears to be in the public interest. "He said it would be very unfortunate if any financial institution were to suggest that they do not see the broad public purpose of this legislation," the lobbyist reported.
"Also last week, it was announced that Robert E. Rubin, the man who handpicked Summers to replace him as secretary of the Treasury, will take a position as co-chairman of Citigroup, which lobbied heavily for this legislation, as did Goldman Sachs, Rubin's company before joining the Clinton administration.
"Citigroup was formed last year in a $ 37.4 billion merger of Citicorp bank and the Travelers Group insurance company, which was tentatively approved on a two-year waiver from existing law forbidding the bank from selling insurance. Under the new law, Citigroup will be made fully legit. This legislation was dead until Rubin, as Treasury secretary, worked out a crucial compromise with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan last February that allowed the bill to move ahead in Congress.
"Federal law prohibits government officials from lobbying their former agencies for a year after leaving their government positions. The Clinton administration has extended that to two years. But Rubin has admitted in interviews that he pushed for this bill's passage in the months after resigning from the Cabinet. Why is no one calling him on that?" *