Bob Rubin Cuddles
So that’s what this is about. For a moment I was totally speechless and had to dig into my Harvard trained PhD brain to figure out what the hell he meant by “cuddling”! What can I say; once a teetotaling math geek, always a bit slow to pick up on signals from the menfolk. So the former Treasury Secretary had a “crush” on me! And not long afterward the former Treasury Secretary had his tongue down my throat and hands everywhere sort of like an octopus. But as soon as the thought entered my mind — the former Treasury Secretary has his tongue down my throat?! — I came to my senses a bit and awkwardly went back home before we both got too carried away. This is to say, I said to myself that there would be no other former Treasury Secretary appendages entering any other of my orifices.
No man’s behavior looks attractive when he’s cheating on his wife, but this little tell-all by a woman who had a sort-of fling with former Goldman chief and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin is more than unusually embarrassing. It’s all coming out now — Goldman is officially the new Tiger Woods. The next revelation has to be something involving Gary Cohn and Ted Haggard.
The most disgusting (and revealing) part of the story is, to me, this part of Iris Mack’s narrative:
Things were much more relaxed by the time I walked him back to the Ritz – which was along the way to my South Beach condo. When we passed a homeless man along the way he made a bit of a show of opening up his fat leather billfold and producing a dollar — “There but for the grace of God…” he remarked melodramatically — and I gave him a lot of heat for that, because who exactly did he think he was kidding? I said give the man a job. Heck, you’re the head of a bank!
A multi-multi-millionaire giving a homeless guy a dollar on the way to the Ritz… if that isn’t the perfect metaphor for the modern “Third Way” Democratic Party, I don’t know what is. And Jesus, is there any area of human interaction where these guys aren’t complete and utter culturally tone-deaf buffoons? Even during the hearings, every last one of these Goldman guys, it was like they had no idea how awful they sounded, and how much the whole world wanted to reach through the TV and pull their tongues out every time they opened their mouths. It’s amazing.
An even creepier side note about that above passage: what if it’s true? What if a Bob Rubin really does, a hundred million dollars later, still retain some ingrained fear of being broke and forced to live on the street? That would really be telling, and go pretty far toward explaining the pathology, I think. Or maybe not. But it’s interesting.
Then there’s this part:
But none of this seemed to require Bob Rubin to actually do very much. On November 1 he called me four times as I was leaving for a conference in Raleigh; first while I was packing, then in the cab to the airport, then again before I went through security, then again when I was supposed to land. When I had to put the phone away he acted like a little kid who’d been told it was bedtime, and said he would call me again when I got to my destination.
“Don’t you have work to do, Mr. Chairman?” I joked during our third call.
“I’m the chairman of the executive committee,” he specified.
“What the hell does that mean?” By then I was confused.
“It means the word ‘chairman’ is in the title and I get paid very handsomely, but I don’t have any actual managerial responsibilities.” He seemed pleased.
“Well excuse moi,” I shot back. “Nice work if you can get it!”
A couple of things here. One, this seems to suggest to me that Bob Rubin’s main job at Citi was to hang around and be available for his political connections. His job, as I understand it, was a sort of permanent, ongoing bribe.
Two, this is another thing that is going to drive people absolutely up a wall when they hear more about it — the fact that contrary to what David Brooks and the rest of those types say, I’m not sure exactly how many hours some of these guys worked. In general there seem to be quite a number of upper-management types who make their money according to the crack-dealing model of corporate hierarchy, i.e. the many levels of worker bees underneath do the actual deals and shed the actual blood, while up top a thin layer of entitled, essentially tenured assholedom collects the huge money.
We may get to see some of that reality fleshed out in the Abacus case. It’ll be interesting to watch. In the meantime, it’s just delicious seeing all of this horrible stuff about Goldman pouring out now. It’s so rare to see someone who actually deserves it get the full-blown media turbo-fragging in this country.
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Gave the guy a buck, eh? Just like Carnegie handing out dimes during the depression. Taken for inflation, its the same act. These jokers never change.
Hey, the guy is just looking out for the greater economy. If a guy like that went around handing out hundos to every transient he came across the price of MD 20/20 would go through the roof.
In response to another comment. See in context »Joker? Carnegie? Comparing Rubin to Carnegie as far as benevolence goes demands an apology for your ignorance. Read up on Carnegie’s lasting legacy to your country before any lazy insults.
In response to another comment. See in context »” In general there seem to be quite a number of upper-management types who make their money according to the crack-dealing model of corporate hierarchy, i.e. the many levels of worker bees underneath do the actual deals and shed the actual blood, while up top a thin layer of entitled, essentially tenured assholedom collects the huge money.”
God I hope I get one of those jobs some day. Being on the wrong end of this equation is really exhausting. – http://www.sawyerspeaks.wordpress.com
Local broadcast media outlets here in the mid-west are still insisting that Goldman is a misunderstood victim in the global financial district’s theme of greed (monopoly capital fetishism), and that they are, for the most part, innocent. All I seem to hear is that Goldman should ultimately be given a pass. After all, they’re mad profiteering shenanigans support our easy way of life.
Right.
Just the other day I read your Hagee-brainwash-camp infiltration pieces from The Great Derangement, Matt. Fun reading. Good work. Looking forward to your next book.
I used to work in television news, and I would be shocked if there was a local station anywhere that had more than two people who could intentionally articulate anything even close to what you wrote.
Even if they had a coloring book to explain it.
In response to another comment. See in context »Was that the one with the chapter on ‘rabiit-cheeked’ Lynndie England? Read his first two books, both great!
In response to another comment. See in context »I know what you’re talking about — this week-end has been dedicated to the Buffett-Berkshire-Bow-and-Scrape. Buffett has been all too vocal about how goldfuk sucs has done nothing wrong; it’s my opinion that if Buffett is supporting them they must have REALLY done something truly heinous.
In response to another comment. See in context »I wasn’t thinking “Third Way” so much — but your idea about the pathology is cinematic.
“Coming to America,” to be more specific, as Randolph and Mortimer Duke accept a handout from Eddie Murphy’s prince.
I’m really more concerned about that other Democratic paradigm for charity making a comeback. The one where politicians feel morally and spiritually fulfilled for doing “The Lord’s Work,” when all they did was tax unwilling participants and funnel the charity where it benefits them politically.
When I hear people invoke Christ to pass a public policy, it makes me itch, because it is very clearly non-Biblical. (But something tells me Rubin never cracked the New Testament. He missed out on the Lilies of the Field, and instead was Macking on an Iris.)
Rubin’s Menu of power abuse: the Trifecta
For brunch, I have the order of sexual harassment with the infidelity on this side
For the noon profit-prophet walk, I’ll take the one dollar appetizer – the Miami street shuffle of wealth display
*(making all future charts on wages and CEO pay meaningless over the last thirty years as one dollar given now can grow in homeless communities to vast sums)…
Oh can also get a bit of benevolent sanctimony for my lady-friend tout-suite because I am most cool when I bestow onto others my penchant for philanthropy
For Dinner, my guest will have the I can’t believe this is executive life coddle with matching chairman’s bib of responsibility. Oh! do you go strawless? See if you can find a curly straw for her to sip the Cristal…
I’ll the have the fried bald-eagle bailout and Citi-golden parachute free-trade corn with a side salad of corporate whoredom and recently jailed Mexican rice..
For dessert, I will quote lines from the movie Good Will Hunting: “Fuck it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a foreign village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the national guard; Heck, I could be elected president.”
No digestif other than loving the smell of napalm in the morning
Iron Chef FUCK YOU BOB
Matt,
Keep it coming. At this point, I don’t mind the Full Monty of “assholedom.” Keep exposing these comic book caricatures for what they are. The more that I learn about Wall Street and Corporations in general the more that I feel we are headed in one direction.
I used to think that we could fix this, that if sane, reasonable people got involved that we can pull us back from the precipice. Now I am starting to think otherwise. Greed and self-interest seem so ingrained in these “Bob Rubin” types (and I meet a lot of these guys within my company) that I am certain they will never change. Can you really teach someone empathy? Can you really teach someone to respect others?
So our direction may not be where I want to go but it may be inevitable. Yes, I think there’s a breaking point coming soon and we’re much closer to it than people will admit.
If the economy is rigged against the common man and the government has sold us out completely, there is only one fix.
I know Matt hates the Tea Party folks and while I don’t hate them, I certainly don’t understand how they can distrust the government yet defend Wall Street and Corporations. I think they don’t understand that there hasn’t been any “free enterprise” on Wall Street or in Corporate America in a long time. Once they understand that, I think they will get it.
Of course, the flip side is the “Lefties” who think Legislative reform will be the answer like “more” government is the answer. If these folks just took a look at the last 15 years from an objective standpoint they would see that there government has sold out them out and the rot is so deep it cannot be fixed.
While I applaud Senator Levin for his tough questioning of the Goldman executives, it does not diminish the fact that Senator Levin was part of the same government machine that let these folks steal everyone’s wealth thus causing the 2008 Financial Crisis.
small potatoes
national enquirer is reporting uncovering an Obama cheating scandal, in 2004 with a woman named Vera B. ….and offering over $1 million form witnesses…..
i suspect eyewitnesses can get any amount they ask for
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/reports_obama_cheating_scandal_vera_baker_investigation/celebrity/68590
so the only jobs Obama actually creates are eyewitness jobs to his sex scandal?
That would be a real story if it had any merit. As would a captured bigfoot, a herd of unicorns, a UFO landing on the White House lawn, etc.
In response to another comment. See in context »have you completed your investigation?
In response to another comment. See in context »I didn’t post it, you did. If I suggested that you beat your wife or your boyfriend, whichever applies, I bet you’d suddenly insist on facts and proof, wouldn’t ya.
In response to another comment. See in context »We have. There actually ARE Bigfoots under your bed. Better call mommy – STAT!!!
In response to another comment. See in context »If you were to provide any type of analysis that didn’t confirm your skewed world view then you might have a small scintilla of credibility, but as it stands right now Andy you comments reside in the reactionary hackdom of the ill-informed and uneducated….
Something you might try is reading something that doesn’t already confirm your beliefs…. Oh my bad then you would actually have to consider change…. don’t do that stick to you government is the problem narrative….
In response to another comment. See in context »It has worked so for you up to this point
RE:If you were to provide any type of analysis
I’m not here to analyze
RE:Something you might try is reading something that doesn’t already confirm your beliefs
Ha, ha, ha…yea, i will ignore what interests me….and spend hours on something that doesn’t
In response to another comment. See in context »Andy,
There is a big difference between ignoring what interest you and exploring an alternate idea that does not your beliefs but has enough merit for say several hundreds million inhabitant of the earth…. No one expects you to change, but to consider it….
Something you might watch is Adam Curtis on BBC he has done a great job of merging history, politics, and economics (they are free on youtube……Century of Self and The Trap)
RE:Something you might try is reading something that doesn’t already confirm your beliefs
Ha, ha, ha…yea, i will ignore what interests me….and spend hours on something that doesn’t
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for the Adam Curtis documentaries suggestion. They look interesting.
In response to another comment. See in context »So we should drop the investigation of Obama’s sex-capades to watch some nobody on Youtube…that makes no sense….
What we need are more people investigating Obama
In response to another comment. See in context »and what the hell is so incriminating in his hidden birth certificate
Andy’s just trying to see how many blogs on Trueslant he can be banned from. Leave the poor kid alone.
In response to another comment. See in context »People just don’t like to hear to truth about their hero, Obama
In response to another comment. See in context »Do you actually read these posts? Silly me, of course you don’t. You would be hard pressed to find that many here who would name Obama as their hero.
In response to another comment. See in context »National Enquirer: quite the trusted news source, eh?
Yes, anyone can strike gold if they fling enough shit, but mostly the shit just flies wherever.
In response to another comment. See in context »Great job Matt! Your Vampire Squid theme has gone mainstream:
THE GIANT VAMPIRE SQUID TESTIFIES
St Louis Post-Dispatch April 21, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/28vn99e
(I hope you get a royalty–can plush toys and children’s apparel be far behind?)
I caught some of Charlie Rose interviewing Blankfein (sp?). I started to realize that the tendency of reporters is to not only let these assholes utter narratives that are totally disconnected from reality, but to smile, nod approval and sometimes even profess their agreement.
It’s to the point where the person who is being allowed to spin reality so blatantly and capriciously to serve their own image maintenance can become so untethered from reality they become confused.
At one point Blankfein (eyes shifting left and right)I think admitted and almost apologized for the leading role Goldman Sachs played in the financial meltdown that brought the world to the brink of total disaster (saved only by the embrace of Government)In the very next sentence, without so much as a pause, he extolled the absolute virtuousness and indispensability of Goldman Sachs to life on the planet.
Charlie should get the CEO of BP on and let him talk about how many workers they hire all over the world, how many big, cool Oil rigs BP runs and how competition from other oil companies make it understandable that the biggest, foulest most intolerable environmental disaster ever can of caused by the biggest, most financially sound companies in the Oil industry.
It’s a latter day example of the Same-Shit-Different-Day that I experienced back in the late-80s. I worked as a Computer Programmer for the now-defunct Control Data Corporation in Minneapolis. It was the time when PCs were just getting off the ground and becoming the wave of the future in business. CDC, IBM, and to a lesser degree Sperry-Unisys and Honeywell were locked in a life and death struggle for mainframe and super-computer supremacy. CDC was an outstanding company to be with for quite a while. Unfortunately, they were too large and the management were of a type and background that couldn’t see the future coming and react quickly enough to survive. While the company and industry in general crumbled and us grunts worked like dogs, the guys in boardroom played musical chairs and did quite handsomely. Everyone except the Big Boys knew the score and tried to surf each wave of ‘work-force reductions’ before it drove us head-first into the bottom. I eventually got shit-canned, lost the house we had not even made the first payment on, eventually had to file bankruptcy, and I’m still paying that price almost 25 years later. I see the same Pyramid Scheme playing out now all over the place. People on the lower levels do all the Shit Work and the guys at the higher echelons reap the praise and financial rewards. It doesn’t matter that they are largely responsible for the Shit Sandwich we have to eat; they still get the caviar and glide to a soft landing under their Golden Parachutes. Ah, the America Dream. The late George Carlin was dead-nuts on the money when he said, “It’s the American Dream alright, because you have to be unconscious to believe in it.”
Rubin handing a dollar to a bum, what a fucking saint. He is a true paradigm of virtue. Not to mention the fact, by his own admission, that he doesn’t really work for his money. Like you mentioned above, Brooks likes to think that people are rich because they work so, so hard. This just proves that the only thing these people work hard at is lining everyone up into an Abu Ghraib style human pyramid so they can ascend to the upper echelons of society by walking on their backs.
I was waiting to see your reaction to the Goldman hearing, Matt. If not for you, I wonder if the hearing would have taken place at all.
I actually thought the hearing were a bit of a bore. Yes, it looks like Fabulous Fab is being made the scape goat. Jim Cramer, a Goldman hack, has basically gone from saying Goldman is innocent to whatever Goldman did wrong was Fab’s fault. Far from looking like a powerful, fearless, and intelligent leader, Blankenfein looked clueless as to what Goldman was actually doing.
This fits the Carl Icahn image of a CEO where the CEO is the equivalent of a fraternity president who is a straight C student but has the time to buy you a beer and talk to you when you are feeling down.
And Susan Collins’ question asking Goldman guys if they had a duty to their client, and only one in four saying yes was precious. If that wasn’t a tacit admission to screwing one’s customers, I don’t know what was. I wish one senator would have made the statement that if a business doesn’t exist to serve its clients, it shouldn’t exist. By denying they serve their clients, Goldman basically admitted to being a leech or better yet, a vampire squid:)
As far as Rubin goes, he is just one of thousands successfully jumping from a mediocre paying government job to a well paying job in the business world.
This type of behavior was anticipated and condemned by Ayn Rand in the end of the book Atlas Shrugged. Everyone in the U.S. who had money and power did so on the basis of political connections versus producing needed goods and services for society.
To me, the second funniest thing was Rubin handing the homeless guy a buck and basically proclaiming that if not for God, he too would be homeless. Either this is an admission by Rubin that he is a talentless but blessed hack or is an act of false humility to get in a woman’s pants.
No, the funny part to me was Iris Mack telling Rubin to get this homeless guy a “job”. With this one statement, Ms. Mack speaks volumes about what the qualifications are to be hired in the banking industry.
Weird thing is, in the current Paulson case, Goldman’s “price to market is all we do” argument is fairly sound. But that’s when you realize the unspeakable but mundane truth that all business is a essentially a bloodless free for all. An old boss gave me some very sound advice long ago when I entered a first line management position in a relatively benign, sedate industry: don’t turn your back on anyone, not even me.
It does bring to fore a fundamental dichotomy of businesses who serve both the buyer and seller of a transaction. It’s widely discussed as if their goal is to be “fair” to both, but it is in the DNA of every for profit broker that the over riding main goal is maximizing the broker’s survivability and profits.
Watching the senators mock these business lizard pig dog rabid capitalists for opportunistic, incremental self-interest with regard to transactions they broker was kind of like watching a panel of coyotes, dressed up as dewey eyed fawns, mocking a wolf for baring his teeth.
We need to assume the motive of business is make money, first last and most and devise the rules and punishments for breaking them based on the outcomes of their activity.
In response to another comment. See in context »The more truth that is disclosed about these guys, the better. The truth ain’t pretty and Americans need to know that. So I’m thankful to Iris Mack for telling her Rubin story.
However, her telling was odd to say the least. She moved to Miami to be near her family in New Orleans. (That would be like Tim Tebow moving to Minneapolis to be nearer Denver.) She didn’t notice her Victoria’s Secret sweatpants had one of the famous “PINK” logos on the butt. As a complete stranger, she started a conversation with Rubin. She sent him her resume. She went on a date with Rubin, but assures the reader it was a “date.” When Rubin eventually comes on to her, she leaves out the part between his making his intentions clear and his tongue being in her throat. And she is shocked. Shocked. She describes her flirting comments as if they were harsh accusations. She says she wasn’t going to have sex with him, then two sentences later says (as best I could tell) she had sex with him.
I’m not doubting the veracity of the story, but it seems she tried to make a run-of-the-mill affair sound weirder than it was, to make Rubin come across as a predator rather than someone who responded to her flirtations. If she had become the next Mrs. Rubin, would she have the same level of disgust?
I guess none of that matters. It’s another straw on the camel’s back, and, being about sex, maybe it will get a little attention from the public.
Wow, this looks interesting! OK, I haven’t read it yet, but I’d like to contribute, at this stage anyways,, at least one reference, the book: “In An Uncertain world ” by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg: Rubin’s memoir (2003). Taken from a footnote from Simon and Kwak’s “13 Banks”.
Marco
Sorry, but I just trust the opinion of a woman who’d blab about a love affair on Huffington Post, of all places.
It makes her look trashy, and undermines her credibility to say that he’s a dick. Unlike Tiger’s mistresses, she doesn’t need the money. If any of her clients/bosses see that, they’ll most likely rethink about working with her in the future, given that she has no sense of decorum.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that the man is a prick in real life, but the story would be worthwhile if it came from his caddy/gardener or someone like that, instead of someone who considered him worthy enough with whom to have an affair.
I’m sorry Matt, I’m a big fan but I can’t sit here idly while you become another Manichean fringe writer. Today I drove by a protest taking place on the front lawn of the Jimmy Carter Center. Of course, it involved the Arizona immigration bill (talk about irony–protesting human rights outside the Carter Center) and one of the protestors’ two prominent banners read: “stop the Apartheid in AZ!” Initially, I was inclined to sympathize with the cause and concede, “egregious historical inaccuracy aside, this is a good thing these people are doing” and then I thought back to all the youtube footage I’ve seen of Glenn Beck calling Obama a socialist, I took a step back, and condemned these idiots for imbuing what should have been a perfectly rational opposition to horrible legislation with a radical flavor. I think as one of our liberal influences, you should take reasoned shots at what are increasingly floundering and pathetic targets.
The Bob Rubin thing, while weird, is meaningless. He cheated on his wife, but 66% of people do, and there are tens of millions of liberals in this country, so moral degeneracy is not particular to the banking industry, just like it wasn’t particular to Clinton during his presidency. That he gave a homeless person a dollar, and rather grandiosely lamented about his humanitarianism/fear of poverty is likely a testament to his having (again oddly) been nervous in front of Ms. Mack. I tell girls I was a great high school football player, when I was a mediocre tight end who never caught a touchdown pass. While the symbolism is there, you can’t extrapolate any real meaning from Rubin giving a dollar to a homeless man. Evaluating his predilection for ‘cuddling,’ taken in combination with the dollar-giving incident, I could easily (and impartially) say that Rubin was nervous, that his actions weren’t indicative of the type-A assholeishness you so fervently despise, and that he’s entitled to his own personal weirdness. You’d have a case if he grabbed the girl and said something with ‘fuck’ in it.
As for his position at Citi, give me a break. You could say he gets paid purely for his ‘political connections’ but that insight (if you want to call it that) is myopic. Rubin’s appointment as Citi’s Chairman has more to do with Citi’s industrial ‘brand equity.’ He’s a former Goldman Partner and Treasury Secretary. His presence and the presence of his opinions reassure millions of people worldwide. Chastising him for ‘not working hard and making a shitload of money’ is comparable to chastising Bill Clinton for having gone through a presidency and then collecting 250k to make half-hour extemporaneous speeches. It’s not like Rubin’s tenure at Citi exists in isolation. He’s a maven of finance, and even if you hate finance, you can’t disregard that. His figurehead status, which generates multiples of whatever Citi pays him, is wholly separate from whatever political benefits Rubin may accrue. Rubin earned his stripes, even if you don’t agree with how he did it (a less infuriating way of saying don’t hate the player, hate the game.)
WRT your first paragraph, what’s so radical and irrational about a sign comparing the AZ immigration law to apartheid? Under apartheid blacks (and possibly other non-whites) had to carry internal passports at all times. Under the AZ law, hispanics must carry their citizenship papers at all times. Seems like a reasonable parallel.
Not a perfect parallel mind you, I’m not claiming that the language of the law explicitly singles out brown people. But it doesn’t have to.
In response to another comment. See in context »That’s like comparing Obama to Hitler on the basis that both were proponents of the Arts…it misses the point. Any two things are comparable in some sense. The point shouldn’t be to contrive a comparison between someone with whom you disagree and a notorious villain, it should be to accurately represent your point. The “internal passports” you refer to identified people not as citizens of South Africa (since native Blacks weren’t regarded as citizens anyway) but rather they designated peoples’ racial (and thus social) classes, something which doesn’t legislatively exist in America. Hispanics don’t have to carry around cards that say “hispanic–third class” on them. Just like when someone says ‘Apartheid’ the first thing that comes to mind is violent redistricting of Blacks, segregation etc, the first thing you think of when you hear ‘Hitler’ is likely genocide or megalomania. I’m a liberal too, but I don’t think writing on a blog that only people of your political persuasion peruse justifies skewing history.
In response to another comment. See in context »BTW, obviously the Obama/Hitler v Apartheid/AZ bill isn’t an eye for an eye. I used the analogy just to invoke a common right-wing comparison that drives Dems crazy
In response to another comment. See in context »While you are right about the clumsy donation of the dollar, I think you would have to admit Rubin’s sum behavior toward Ms. Mack was fairly creepy. (It’s also funny to excuse his awkwardness by saying he was nervous in front of the piece of extra-marital tail he was chasing.)
If Obama awkwardly gave a homeless man a dollar, Rush and Beck would make a big deal of it, sure. They do that every day; mocking Obama over nothing is their bread-and-butter. However, if Obama gave the dollar while chasing some strange tail, I couldn’t really fault Rush and Beck for having fun with it.
We are never going to be able to tar-and-feather people again, never be able to put them in public stocks. About all we have left is media mockery. We can’t hurl tomatoes at Rubin, but we can sure as hell mock him for saying “cuddle.”
Lastly, Matt shouldn’t really be held to the same standard for a blog entry as he is for a 5,000-word Rolling Stone article. I was glad to be made aware of Ms. Mack’s dealings with Rubin.
In response to another comment. See in context »“Rubin’s appointment as Citi’s Chairman has more to do with Citi’s industrial ‘brand equity.’ He’s a former Goldman Partner and Treasury Secretary.”
===========================================
Rubin’s appointment as Citi’s Chairman was his reward from Sandy Weill for killing Glass-Steagall when he was Treasury Secretary. Period.
Mr. Weill goes to Washington
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html
“Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill’s chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, “You’re buying the government?”
======================================
And just like his good Buddy Sandy Weill, this so called “maven of finance” has never run anything that didn’t lose money while he was at the helm.
And as someone who had the misfortune of working for Sandy Weill when he was President of American Express, I speak from experience.
In response to another comment. See in context »“if that isn’t the perfect metaphor for the modern “Third Way” Democratic Party, I don’t know what is”
If only Cory Booker or Pete Peterson were there to explain how a tax cut for millionaires could lead to another dollar being given.
Haha, yeah, a dollar finally trickled down.
In response to another comment. See in context »ring a ding ding!
In response to another comment. See in context »It all sounds grimly normal to me. Rubin is a powerful man in his industry but he’s still human. I think you’ll find a great number of CEOs in all industries that don’t actually have any real work they are expected to do. It’s a reward for faithful services over previous years and I can’t think of anything more deserving of gratitude than being the guy who was able to mold monetary policy of the world’s richest country specifically to enrich his friends and the company.
But, like most people who don’t have any real work to do, he’s obviously bored and has grubby affairs to pass the time. Despite being one of Tom Wolfe’s original masters of the universe, his social skills never really developed when he was young and then halted completely once he was able to use money and power as aphrodisiacs. So his ‘patter’ (as the Scots call it) is decidedly amateurish, no surprise there.
As for his charitable works, I’ve seen this in a great number of people who have long been in a position where keeping track of things like their personal spending money was neither possible nor necessary. They try to demonstrate their charity by making a gesture so pathetic it instead underlines just how uncharitable they are.
It reminds me of a time in New Zealand in the early 1990s, when hordes of white South Africans were emigrating to escape the expected implosion once the ‘blicks’ were in charge of everything. I met a lot of their children at university, and they would often try and demonstrate how utterly devoid of racism they were by describing something they had done back in ‘South Efrica’ that benefited the native population.
Unfortunately, both the thing they described, and the way that they described it, were both enormously racist and it was obvious they just didn’t even know what racism really was.
Something like:
‘Oh no, my father was very kind to the blacks, he was one of the first in our area to start paying his farm workers and later on even gave them a day off during Eid.’
People like Rubin have exactly this relationship to charity and the people who need it.
So he’s bored, a sleazebag, socially inept, and is such an asshole that he thinks giving a bum a dollar is some great display of charity. But of course he would only do it to try and impress whoever he was with.
Sounds like just about any former-GM of any large organisation.
Bill Gates could have ended up like this, but he saw it all coming and instead prepared for becoming a Microsoft figurehead by building a giant charitable organisation that makes real and enormous demands on both his time and wallet.
A little diatribe entitled “We are Wall Street … ”
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/
“So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside … Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.”
Did you get that, everyone? No more free rides on this guy’s back! You no longer get to wash the $80K car he’s not going to buy. Because when you *did* get to wash his car, that was just for fun. Oh, my sides…
Bless his oblivious little heart.
That passage of giving the dollar to the homeless guy seems sadly appropriate.
You can send Americans’ jobs across oceans, and fund military occupations instead of health care with their money and not have any pangs of conscience as long as you give a homeless guy a dollar.
I’m beyond disgusted with Democrats.
Other than Rubin trying to get laid, you mean ‘Republicans’, right?
In response to another comment. See in context »No, I mean Democrats. Rubin’s a typical representative of how the Democrats do things – kicking the middle class and poor in the teeth in every way that matters, while performing superficial gestures along the lines of giving a homeless guy a dollar – to give the pretense that they aren’t aligned against the general public.
Democrats do sweet fuck all to correct unfair trade deals and stop job outsourcing, and keep throwing lives and money into bottomless holes in the occupations. It took a Democrat to pass NAFTA, welfare “reform”, and give away the store to the private insurance industry with the “health care bill”.
In response to another comment. See in context »Which is not to say that I hold Republicans in anything less than complete contempt either.
In response to another comment. See in context »I like the point about the guys at top doing very little actual work for lots of money, and always remember this when I hear some teabagger going on about “hard work” and “personal responsibility” and “no handouts for the lazy.”
Most of the hardest working people I know make very little money, whereas many of the richest cats I know seem to have plenty of time and boredom on their hands. I know this is a generalization, but I’m tired of the rant that equates wealth with hard work, and poverty with laziness.
It brings to mind that town hall meeting when GWB was out trying to steal Social Security, and that woman mentioned that she had three jobs. Georgie’s double take on that was precious. Talk about lazy rich versus hard working poor…this was the epitome of that.
Exclusive image: Bob Rubin, cuddling.
http://www.correntewire.com/exclusive_shot_bob_rubin_cuddling
NOTE All hail the creator of the “vampire squid” meme….
I hate to say something Larry Summers-esque, but after digging around I’m still reeling from the fact that there’s an attractive black female quant out there who was almost an astronaut who now writes children’s books about money. Every quant I’ve ever known or heard of is a geeky white (“white” in American terms) male, every single one and none of them were almost astronauts or wrote children’s books that I know of. She has to be a statistical near-impossibility and has one Hell of a life story, clearly.
Truly interesting, though, is that she was originally fired from Harvard after reporting to Larry Summers (Rubin’s best buddy) that the Harvard Foundation’s investments in derivatives were a really bad idea.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/larry_summers_ignored_frightening_trading_practice.php#more
And she was right, of course. I wonder what she did at ENRON, now that I’m reading about her. Interesting character, couldn’t care less about the tabloid stuff, but I guess I wouldn’t be reading about her otherwise.
Hey Matt- as a first-time caller, I apologize if this has been already mentioned a billion times, but have you thought of doing (or have you already done) a piece where you interview, say, horseracing betting expert Andrew Beyer about Goldman Sachs? Beyer works for the Post, so that sort of gives him a little added “cred”. Could be, as the saying goes, a hot one!
BTW, regarding Rubin’s remarks about his chariman’s “duties,” did anyone else flash back to Mr. Bernstein in “Citizen Kane”? “Me? I’m Chairman of the Board. I got nuttin’ but time…”
Matt you are insulting a pillar of the finacial community…a legend…an absolute mountain of a man. He is allowed to be a slimeball. You cannot fault him for being a 72y/o stalker. After all that is relatively common behavior. Sure …he’s married, but seriously you cannot expect him to remain faithful at 72. He has all that testosterone surge to deal with. After all, what man can stop that from interfering with aberrant behavior. I am certain that this behavior is the first time for him and his rape and pillage attempt here at nursing home age has nothing to do with the general feeling of entitlement on Wall Street.
That was a very revelatory and amusing piece by Iris Mack about the twisted mentality of the “Masters of the Universe”, Democrat variety. Especially that anecdote about that motherfucker Rubin giving a homeless person ONE WHOLE DOLLAR in an ostentatious patronising kind of way. How disgusting! ( And these people rule us!?) And then the “cuddling” bit.. Wow, a scene worthy of a decent Hollywood movie. Are you listening Oliver Stone ,if it’s not too late to put it in your latest Wall Street movie?
Anyways, that Iris Mack babe is my kinda gal. OK, a little too close to Wall Street despite her criticismas of Rubin, but intelligent, sensitive, funny, probably great-looking.Her amusing references to “funky” derivatives and her “orifices” were priceless. All power to you, baby!
Marco
Meh – so Bob Rubin’s like many other people who cheat on their spouses. There are people who enjoy open marriages Bob; go find them and play with them!
My guess is Rubin will write this off as a conveniently timed attack on his character and move on. He can confirm the $ giveaway with self-righteousness or deny such an event even occurred.
It’s nice to have more mud on his face, but I suspect little will come from this – a divorce, tops.
If Rubin’s 2007 tax return shows a one-dollar deduction for charitable donations, I’ll have no doubt the incident happened.
In response to another comment. See in context »I wonder if he made enough to claim!!
In response to another comment. See in context »;~)
Good point. With his tax accountants, he probably got back EIC.
In response to another comment. See in context »Outstanding; not only does this pond scum fuck some sexpot, he also manages to fuck all of us who don’t happen to live in ‘his’ alternate reality where only the UNdeserved rich romp their lives away.
The jobs at the top (like Rubin’s) are [aid so extravagantly so that the guys at the bottom will kill each other to get there. If we made laws that made the pay of top jobs commensurate with the effort required to perform them, we would destroy the Wall Street way of life. Even Wall Street quality jerks wouldn’t be able to justify the hours for just a regular executive paycheck.
As a hater of Goldman Sachs I’m kind of gratified by the story, but as a woman I’m pretty suspicious-on-principle of any other woman’s slimy anecdotes against a former tryst. It always smacks of vendetta to me: You son of a bitch, I’ll show you, I will so embarrass you…. I mean, taking his “annoying” calls through all those channels of her Very Important business trip, and his slighting of the vagrant as they walked to *her* South Beach condo. Come on. “I am a Harvard-trained PhD.” Yeah, and he apparently really fucked you over. Nice job. It’s like every girlfriend I ever had, once she got burned, suddenly the guy she was crazy about turned into a terrible lover with a small dick.
As hypnotized as I am by this report from The Man Who Knows and Always Did Know the Real Goldman Sachs, what we all need from Matt now is HIS explanation of what seems to many of us Warren Buffet’s most incomprehensible act ever — standing tall behind Lloyd Blankfein.
Think Semgroup, Conoco, oil barrels, and flash trades. Rather than sucking up his pride and riding out his Conoco bummer (which was the result of Goldman’s bold market manipulation), ole Warren just had to get himself a slice of that poison fraud pie. He stepped in serious shit when he drug Berkshire into Goldman’s world, and now he’s doomed to hump the public image game that will ultimately either sail or sink the Ponzi derivatives pyramid. And so we have poor Warren all over the news, peddling smut like a ten dollar hooker in downtown Detroit, praying to hell to keep the wolves at bay. If Goldman has done wrong, now so too has Buffett.
In response to another comment. See in context »I worked on Wall St for 20 years, at one point running a derivatives sales desk for a Private Bank (if you want to see all kinds of nasty, that’s the place to be.)
A more foul collection of minge-faced leg-humping ass-lickers I’ve never seen, nor hope to.
Any job up to about 3 (maybe 4 depending on size of bank) levels below the CEO is essentially a political sinecure with all of the attractive character requirements that go with that type of position.
Thanks for the graphic first-hand report. I learned a new word. “minge-faced.” And I have no doubt that your descriptions are not exaggerations. Filthy lucre eats the soul, no?
In response to another comment. See in context »I caught parts of the Blankfein interviews over the weekend. I noted that the focus, from what I saw, was predominately on the current charges, and seemed to stay away from the bigger issues. What a fucking weezel and what a fucking waste of an opportunity to get him sweating. I would have preferred the extreme closeup, old fashioned 60 minutes interview with the dangling ash off the end of a cigarette, as lampooned by Martin Short in SNL. When asked about all the harm caused, the unemployment, wage cuts, etc.., his response was that his dad worked for the post office and he grew up in public housing. Who the fuck cares? What does that show? Does that give you the right to steal? Does it make is sweeter to steal since you were once lower middle class? (Sorry for using the “f” word, I am just really pissed off)
Bob Rubin, after being one of the prime plutocratic piggy agents who helped wreck the economy, wants to be cuddled. Ahh..
Can you say, “ROSEBUD….!” ?
Y A W N.
No idea why this woman thought she should share her South Beach experiences with the rest of us but it’s too easy to make fun of a middle aged guys attempts to get a little. He should have found a nice Colombian or Brazilian girl, instead of an American who still seems to be in a high school frame of mind. As to the title of Chairman of the Executive Committee, that has always existed as a nice little cubbyhole to put someone out to pasture (sorry, mutually exclusive metaphors, there). The dollar incident reminds me of a Christmas Eve moment when I saw two Wall Street traders drop a bottle of whiskey into the lap of a bum in the World Trade Center. The last thing he really needed, I’m sure but hey, it had a certain style.
I contacted Iris Mack about her Rubin article and got a nice e-mail message back in response. She also gave a link to Matt’s take on her Rubin article on her Twitter page.
Marco
‘A multi-multi-millionaire giving a homeless guy a dollar on the way to the Ritz… if that isn’t the perfect metaphor for the modern “Third Way” Democratic Party, I don’t know what is.’
I just read a joke that with minor tweaking (from lawyer to banker) works well as a corollary to this:
One afternoon a lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the roadside eating grass. Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and he got out to investigate.
He asked one man, “Why are you eating grass?”
“We don’t have any money for food,” the poor man replied. “We have to eat grass.”
“Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I’ll feed you,” the lawyer said.
“But sir, I have a wife and two children with me. They are over there, under that tree.”
“Bring them along,” the lawyer replied.
Turning to the other poor man he stated, “You come with us, also.”
The second man, in a pitiful voice, then said, “But sir, I also have a wife and SIX children with me!”
“Bring them all, as well,” the lawyer answered.
They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was. Once underway, one of the poor fellows turned to the lawyer and said, “Sir, you are too kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you.”
The lawyer replied, “Glad to do it. You’ll really love my place. The grass is almost a foot high.”
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