May 28, 2019
Most people probably know of Robert Rubin as the person who thought deregulating finance and having a huge housing bubble was cool. They may also know that he hugely profited from the bubble personally as a top executive at Citigroup, a bank that was at the center of the bubble’s finance and would have gone bankrupt in the crash, had it not been for a massive government bailout.
They may also know Robert Rubin as the person who pushed for an over-valued dollar, which led to a huge trade deficit and decimated U.S. manufacturing. And, they may know Robert Rubin as the person who wanted the Fed to raise interest rates back in 2014 when the overall unemployment rate was over 6.0 percent and the unemployment rate for blacks was over 11.0 percent.
But, thanks to the New York Times, we can also learn that Robert Rubin wants us to take into account the federal government’s savings on health care costs associated with programs like food stamps. Rubin is of course right on this, but it would really be hard to beat him on the trivia scale here.
Comments