Word: rubiner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...best. His resume coming in was that of a businessman and budgeteer; many hoped that in a time of surpluses, O?Neill would lead a long-awaited common-sense assault on the tax code and government spending. The hope was that his lack of credibility with Wall Street - Rubin came from a long stretch as a Goldman Sachs bigwig - wouldn?t be missed. The occasional gaffes - appearing to talk down the dollar, making fun of day traders, throwing head-fakes over Argentina, and spending the first weeks in office improving worker safety at Treasury even as the first signs...
...Rubin, the Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary who stepped down in 1998 at the top of his game (and, as it turned out, the U.S. economy?s) to take a lucrative job with Citicorp, who accompanied Alan Greenspan to a private session of the Senate Finance committee to recommend a temporary $100 billion stimulus package as a way to help the economy get back into some kind of gear...
...official word was that Rubin?s presence was a show of bipartisanship. But has the credibility of Greenspan, hardly a flagrant Republican these past 14 years at the Fed?s helm, sunk so low? Or was it that in a time of economic crisis, the sight of Rubin and Greenspan together again, just like the time they saved the world from the 1997 Asian currency meltdown, was deemed to be far more reassuring that the sight of Greenspan and O?Neill...
...perhaps the Bush Administration suddenly figured it needed a heavy hitter, a battle-tested veteran whose mere presence would assure Wall Street and Congress alike that a comeback from the mother of all economic shocks was possible to engineer quickly without regretting it later. Because Rubin was a Treasury secretary for bad times - who made them good...
...After arriving in the wake of a recession that Clinton had convinced voters was still going on, Rubin pushed through a politically risky fiscal policy that helped produce two terms of low long-term interest rates, miniscule unemployment, and booming economic growth that filled government coffers higher than they?d ever been. Then he led the international effort to keep the Asian crisis contained and the U.S. confident and afloat, and left in the middle of the high-tech boom...