"Robert Rubin: What meltdown?
In a talk on Wednesday, the Citigroup director said the current financial upheaval is just cyclical. And none of the blame that there was to assign went to Wall Street.
By Katie Benner, writer-reporter
(Fortune) -- A lending catastrophe has consumed homeowners, mortgage companies, and the financial system, but Robert Rubin, Citigroup's director and executive committee chair, doesn't seem particularly alarmed.
He told a small crowd at Manhattan's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Wednesday that the problems now roiling the markets and forcing the Federal Reserve into a defensive posture are "all part of a cycle of periodic excess leading to periodic disruption," and that we are not in fact on the verge of a financial meltdown.
And the economic problems that he did acknowledge were blamed on just about everyone but the major U.S. financial players. Rubin said part of the problem is that we need a "more educated electorate" to hold politicians accountable....
Rubin was stumped when asked where the U.S. fit into a world where China has become the global factory, Brazil the world's farmer, and India its back office. "We can do all of these things, but we have to invest in what we have to invest in, which is education," he said....
Education to DO WHAT? The "good jobs" that were supposed to be the next wave were OUTSOURCED and OFF-SHORED!!
--MORE--"
Then again, maybe the guy is right.
Judging by the rabble in my town?
:-(
