Robert Rubin

On a recent Meet the Press face-off between Democrats and Republicans, a politician claimed we urgently need to cut government spending. He embraced a plan to slash vital government programs and gut retirement security, while actually cutting taxes for the rich. The only tax hikes in his plan were targeted toward the already-devastated middle class. more »

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It took the journalists at Bloomberg News two years - and presumably lots of legal fees - to pry information out of the Federal Reserve that should have been made public long ago. We now know that the Fed's secret $7.7 trillion lending program wasn't just the most massive bank bailout ever seen, and it wasn't just free money for mega-bankers - though it was certainly both of those things. It was also the greatest hoax in stock market history.

No, scratch that. It was the greatest hoax in the history of money. And it was built on lies. How many? Let us count the ways.

Here's the first one: The banks paid back all the money back that they were given. No, they didn't. They paid back the principal on these loans. But by obtaining loans at rates far below market value, we now know they received the equivalent of $13 billion in cash giveaways.

Here's another lie: Fed economists support a free-market economy.

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The President says he understands the frustration behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. That's nice. But the anger will keep growing as long as the government keeps handing out free passes instead of perp walks to bankers at serial corporate criminals like Citigroup.

The Administration is finally talking the talk, but without criminal investigations it's not walking the walk. Iit's still not too late. While the SEC's latest deal should outrage you, the Administration can makes things right with two decisive actions.

Get-Out-of-Jail Free Card

The SEC announced yesterday that Citigroup agreed to pay $285 million to settle charges that it misled (synonyms for that word include deceived; lied to; tricked and defrauded) investors in a mortgage securities deal, telling them it was a good investment when it knew otherwise and was secretly betting it would fail.

That's not just slimy. As the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found in other instances, that kind of behavior is also illegal.

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Yesterday some prominent people signed a letter urging the so-called "Super Committee" to "go big" on cuts to the Federal budget. Many of these people would describe themselves as "moderate" and "centrist." Some would call themselves liberal. I've met a few of them casually, both Republicans and Democrats, and they seemed like very nice people.

They're nothing like the audience members at the Republican Presidential debate who shouted "yes!" when asked if society should let a young man die because he didn't buy health insurance. They're courteous and civilized, and were undoubtedly appalled by the shouts from the crowd.

That sort of thing isn't done in the salons or think tanks of Washington. You wouldn't catch anyone who signed that letter behaving that way.

But are they really all that different? more »

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Happy New Year! more »

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(This is the second in a two-part response to the attempted Republican sabotage of the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission. Part One is here.)

sabotage [ˈsæbəˌtɑːʒ] n. 1. the deliberate destruction, disruption, or damage of equipment, a public service, etc., as by enemy agents, dissatisfied employees, etc. 2. any similar action or behaviour.
- Collins English Dictionary

The Republican Party's Sleeper Cell in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has finally done its dirty work. The four GOP Commissioners staged a phony crisis as a pretext for walking out, and now there are a lot of headlines like this one: "Crisis Panel's Split on Blaming Wall Street May Limit Impact of Findings." This is Wall Street's message to its four operatives on the Commission: Mission accomplished.

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A sleeper cell of four Republicans struck the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this week, escalating what had been previously been a campaign of covert obstruction into an overt act of sabotage. That act should be seen for what it is: A "denial of service attack" on bipartisan cooperation and public deliberation, designed to destroy the Commission's work and discredit its findings.

The subversives also released a document which they characterized without any apparent embarrassment as a "primer." You may remember that "primers" are the simple books used to teach small children, like the Dick and Jane reading series, My Little Book of Dinosaurs, or So You Want to be a Lobbyist.

But the most important book the saboteurs used was the Republican playbook - for disrupting, subverting, and destroying government institutions. Pay attention to that playbook. It's been used before, and it will be used again. more »

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Peter Orszag's maiden voyage as a New York Times columnist resonates with twenty years of failed economic policy. It's a grab bag of Robert Rubin's Greatest Hits, remixed by a younger DJ for new audiences. It's all there: The mythologizing of the markets. more »

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Robert Rubin and Joseph Stiglitz are going public on jobs and the deficit, in what looks very much like a re-run of a major policy debate during the Clinton era. The dispute is simple—should the government focus on putting people back to work, or should it try to cut the deficit? more »

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"Budgetball is an innovative sport that combines fiscal strategy and physical play."
- Budgetball Rulebook, "Pass the Ball - Not The Buck"

Billionaire Pete Peterson is funding an elaborate campaign to convince a nation with more than 15 million unemployed citizens that the most urgent crisis we face today is not unemployment ... or poverty, or inadequate healthcare, or the decimation of the middle class. He's already created a "news service" to propagate his ideas - the Washington Post outsourced its financial reporting to him - and hosted a "deficit summit" headlined by the same people that got us into the mess we're in today. (Greenspan? Rubin? That's not called a "summit." It's called "rounding up the usual suspects.")

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