Citigroup is collapsing, but the protégés of Bob Rubin, a key Citigroup director as well as the architect of so much of the bubble-making economics of the 1990s, are going to Washington to solve the financial crisis.
While a few eyebrows have gone up, it’s a gentle sort of irony.
The Times charts the changing nature of Rubinomics today, but barely makes a suggestion about issues of underlying credibility or about the obvious difficulties involved with these guys cleaning up a mess that they have had so direct a hand in helping to create.
This is because everybody is looking for salvation and, however obviously clay-footed, Bob Rubin and the Rubinites are the last people who, once upon a time, did something right.
It is also because, so far, this seems to be the main thesis of the new Obama administration: Let’s return to the talent and the aspirations of the Clinton 1990s, that halcyon time.
In some sense, the generous attitude on the part of the media and even the Republican opposition—generally respectful about the Obama choices—is an optimistic sign. People do believe we can turn the clock back to more prosperous and energetic days.
In another way, however, the return of the Rubinites makes the underlying desperation and hopelessness of the present situation ever clearer: The plaintive desire to go back to the way it was has never gotten anyone back to the way it was.
(AP Image)
