Rubinomics Bleg
by cactus
Rubinomics Bleg
I’ve read in a few places that the term “Rubinomics” was coined by Kevin Phillips. Anyone know the original cite? Thanks.
Cactus
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
I was reviewing Bailout Bob this a.m. A must see
From Bill Moyer’s Journal; an interview with Kevin Phillips:
“It’s been a bipartisan phenomenon. You can go back to the 1980s and say Reagan and George Bush, Sr., got a bubble started. Clinton got in and got an even bigger bubble going. And then George W. Bush with the biggest bubble of all. But it’s not that the Clintonites didn’t play. They did. Bob Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury — I mean, if he was a Hindu and he was being reincarnated, he’d come back as a pail because this guy bailed out everything you can imagine. They had the Mexican loan bailout. They had the long-term capital management bailout, the Russian Southeast Asian currency bailouts. …”
Another Rubonomics moment is at Frontline.
The Wall Street Fix:
“Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill’s chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, “You’re buying the government?”
BHO should have sent Bailout Bob on his merry way in a leaky boat, with one paddle and a rusty pail in the middle of the ocean. Alas, BHO under the clintonite tutelage, has unleashed a debt tsunami upon the taxpayers. This will not end well for Them.
Washington Post has a good article : The Crash: What Went Wrong? “The meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets on an April day in 1998 brought together Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. — all Wall Street legends, all opponents to varying degrees of tighter regulation of the financial system that had earned them wealth and power.
Their adversary, although also a member of the Working Group, did not belong to their club. Brooksley E. Born, the 57-year-old head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, had earned a reputation as a steely, formidable litigator at a high-powered Washington law firm….”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_robertrubin.html
Here is Rubin in a pretty long interview covering that I think has been termed Rubinomics. This interview was done prior to the 2000s a period where deficits where high and interest rates kept on falling. But he did not know the future when he did the interview. Also, LLoyd Bensten was the secretary of the treasury prior to Rubin. He was the guy that fell on his sword because of the tax hike.
rps,
Rubin and Clinton made money on the Mexican bailout. I would say that was a win for them. I had an image of all the money tied to a donkey riding off into the Mexican sunset. But it did not happen this way, we got the money back and I think with interest.
It looks like Rubinomics is a dead topic. So much for the Clinton legacy.