Robert Rubin is a very accomplished person. He is smart, he is honorable
and he thinks for the long haul. That's certainly how he behaved as
Secretary of the Treasury (and how he also behaved during the ugly fracas
over Larry Summers at the Harvard Corporation). Certainly people have been
wondering what he thinks about the disaster that is now unfolding in the
credit crisis and about how dishonestly the rating business has been
pursued. It's not an abstract curiosity. Citigroup has been dragged down
by these events, and Robert Rubin is a big player in Citigroup, which the
Wall Street Journal this morning suggested might have to be broken up. In
fact, Robert Rubin is the chairman of the executive committee of the board
of Citigroup. What does he think about how his banking house has behaved
and his fellow bankers at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, etc.?