Word: rubins
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...move serious money out of stocks and into bonds, money-market funds and savings accounts. That's not quite the mattress, but as the bedrock of Americans' retirement goals--401(k) assets--keeps withering, you can practically hear the people wail, "Where, oh where, have you gone, Bob Rubin? What, oh what, will you do, Alan Greenspan...
Never mind that we got into this pickle pretty much on our own with mindless market speculation in pipe-dream Internet stocks. Now that the mess is eating our futures, we need leadership, and it's easy to pine for the days when Greenspan and Rubin, with trusty sidekick Larry Summers, ran the economic rapids so expertly that TIME dubbed them the Committee to Save the World during 1998's Asian financial crisis...
...Rubin question, of course, is not meant literally. Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, is easily found in his chairman's office at Citigroup, the banking colossus. Fat lot of good that does us. The Bush Administration faces an all-out market crisis and can offer only wavering reassurances from the untested Paul O'Neill, the former Alcoa boss and current Treasury Secretary. And then there's Bush himself, whom no one sees as supremely tuned to Wall Street worries...
Where's the authoritative and accurate all's well that Rubin delivered when Asian economies started rolling over in 1997? A deep understanding of the Street led Rubin to steer Clinton down the path of reducing the deficit and avoiding criticism of the Federal Reserve's interest-rate policies, consistently soothing markets at critical times...
...Bush's defense, the current climate is different from anything Clinton and Rubin faced. The '98 panic was an overseas event that never did reach these shores. And let's not forget that the stock bubble inflated on Clinton and Rubin's watch. Bush and O'Neill are left to deal with the aftermath, and slowdowns that stem from burst bubbles are tough to fix. Ask the Japanese, who are still wrestling with the results of a market meltdown that began 12 years...