Stop Robert Rubin Before He Kills Again

Robert Rubin is poisoning Washington again.

The former Treasury Secretary who presided over the nearly-fatal deregulation of the financial industry -- then made $126 million nearly killing Citigroup -- had been keeping an appropriately low profile in the nation's capital ever since everything he wrought went pear-shaped.

But now he's back, and once again trying to influence public policy.

On Friday he made his third major (and apology-free) Washington appearance in two weeks, delivering opening remarks at a conference that his pet think tank, the Hamilton Project, co-sponsored with the liberal Center for American Progress.

But the last thing Washington needs right now is another infusion of Rubinomics -- by which I mean the combination of deregulatory zeal, deficit obsession, free tradeism and general coziness with fat-cat Wall Street bankers that Rubin epitomizes.

More at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/stop-robert-rubin-before_n_559465.html

Article notes Rubin still in the Reagonomic's mold-advocating lower corporate tax rates. Ron Blackwell, the chief economist for the AFL-CIO, was alone in pointing out the damage globalization and financialization has done to the American worker. He called for a 'sustained public-investment led recovery that rebuilds the capacity of the American recovery." As the article notes, however, his cause was not taken up by any of the other speakers at the event. My reading of it has Summers, Rubin, and all the usual suspects calling for more of the same economic policies which have seen the destruction of the American working and middle classes.