Rubin Screwups

In a major article on the rise and fall of Citigroup, the NYT highlights the role of Robert Rubin in making possible the problems there.

...Citigroup’s woes are emblematic of the haphazard management and rush to riches that enveloped all of Wall Street. All across the banking business, easy profits and a booming housing market led many prominent financiers to overlook the dangers they courted.

The bank’s downfall was years in the making and involved many in its hierarchy, particularly [CEO Charles] Prince and Robert E. Rubin, an influential director and senior adviser. Citigroup insiders and analysts say that Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin played pivotal roles in the bank’s current woes, by drafting and blessing a strategy that involved taking greater trading risks to expand its business and reap higher profits.

When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

This is the same Robert Rubin who has sat on the economic advisors for Obama. Granted that he would know how the problems came about (he helped create them!), do we really want Mr. Rubin trying to solve the economic crisis? Wouldn't that be like asking Don Rumsfeld to come back to help us get out of Iraq?