"They" did it

[Robert Mahnke]

Felix Salmon on Robert Rubin:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/05/01/blaming-rubin/

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/09/09/fine-rubin/



On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> What 'we' always suspected
>
> Robert Scheer sorts out the details:
>
>        They did it.
>
>        Yes, there is a "they": the captains of finance, their lobbyists,
>        and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who
>        together destroyed an American regulatory system that had
>        been functioning splendidly for most of the six decades since it
>        was enacted in the 1930s.
>
>        The big cop-out in much of what has been written about the
>        banking meltdown has been the argument by those most
>        complicit that there was "enough blame to go around" and that
>        no institution or individual should be singled out for
>        accountability. "How could we have known?" is the refrain of
>        those who continue to pose as all-knowing experts. "Everybody
>        made mistakes," they say.
>
>        Nonsense. This was a giant hustle that served the richest of the
>        rich and left the rest of us holding the bag, a life-altering game
>        of musical chairs in which the American public was the one
>        forced out. Worst of all, legislators from both political parties we
>        elect and pay to protect our interests from the pirates who
>        assaulted us instead changed our laws to enable them.
>
>        The most pathetic of excuses is the one provided by Robert
>        Rubin, who fathered "Rubinomics," the economy policy of
>        President Clinton's two-term administration: The economy ran
>        into a "perfect storm," a combination of unforeseen but
>        disastrously interrelated events. This rationalization is all too
>        readily accepted by the mass media, which is not surprising,
>        given that it neatly absolves the majority of business reporters
>        and editors who had missed the story for years until it was too
>        late.
>
>        The facts are otherwise. It is not conspiratorial but rather
>        accurate to suggest that blame can be assigned to those who
>        consciously developed and implemented a policy of radical
>        financial deregulation that led to a global recession. As
>        President Clinton's Treasury secretary, Rubin, the former
>        cochair of Goldman Sachs, led the fight to free the financial
>        markets from regulation and then went on to a $15-million-a-
>        year job with Citigroup, the company that had most
>        energetically lobbied for that deregulation. He should
>        remember the line from the old cartoon strip Pogo: "We have
>        met the enemy and he is us." . . .
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/the-great-american-sticku_b_715928.html
>