Robert Rubin’s Days Are Numbered

Robert Rubin was a key player in keeping Enron afloat while he and his cronies fleeced billions from employees and investors.

Robert Rubin abandoned the Clinton administration when a recession was unavoidable.  His relief was his protege, Larry Summers.

Robert Rubin talked the Citigroup board into investing in extremely high-risk mortgage-backed securities.  He also showed the bank how to carry those risks off the books–exactly the way he showed Enron how to do it.

Robert Rubin negotiated the Fed’s bailout of Citi even as the government refused to help the auto makers. 

Robin Rubin installed Larry Summers on Obama’s economic council in order to avoid prosecution as the kingpin of Citi’s downfall, which should have resulted in Fed takeover and receivership.

If you want to know who’s responsible for the economic meltdown, you’ve read them all here:

• Franklin Raines
• James Johnson
• Jamie Gorelick
• Robert Rubin
• Lawrence Summers
• Christopher Dodd
• Barney Frank
• Lacy Clay
• Maxine Watters

There’s your list.   These are the men and women who brought you to brink of a Great Depression.  And now the criminal, slimy thief Robert Rubin is whining and lying to the Wall Street Journal. 

Still, Mr. Rubin was deeply involved in a decision in late 2004 and early 2005 to take on more risk to boost flagging profit growth, according to people familiar with the discussions. They say he would comment that Citigroup’s competitors were taking more risks, leading to higher profits. Colleagues deferred to him, as the only board member with experience as a trader or risk manager. "I knew what a CDO was," Mr. Rubin said, referring to collateralized debt obligations, instruments tied to mortgages and other debt that led to many of Citigroup’s losses.

Disgusting. Yet Rubin is the odd-man out and could be the fall guy for the economic collapse.  Unlike the others listed, Rubin remains outside of Obama’s inner circle.  He’s a Goldman Sachs guy, which is not a popular thing to be these days. 

Look for some federal prosecutor to make a name for himself by indicting Rubin.

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The Silver Linings of Mumbai

This is not tongue-in-cheek or flippant.

We can find two good results of the terrorist siege of Mumbai, India.

First, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg’s baby son, Moshe, escaped alive.  Good people have set up a fund for the child where you can contribute.  Please do so.  The child’s survival seems to destine him for greatness, as the story contains odd parallels to the story of Moses.

Second, the tragic events forced organizers to cancel Live Earth India, a pagan celebration to spread the lie of Anthropogenic Global Warming.  With real problems to face, organizers saw no point in promoting a contrived problem invented to increase the power of mega-governments like the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the Arctic Sea Ice is nearly equally to its1980 extent and appears (based on color coding) significantly more dense than in that bitterly cold winter 28 years ago.

UPDATE:  What do you know.  Looks like people around the world are reading Hennessy’s View and wising up to the AGW nuts. 

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They Kept Shopping

Say you’re the CEO of Wal-Mart.  You get a report from your store in Valley Stream, NJ, that one of your employees was trampled to death by your customers who broke down the doors to get at your Black Friday specials before anyone else.  In the chaos, a customer, 8-months pregnant, suffered a miscarriage. 

How would you respond?

Suppose you were the police who responded?  How would you handle the situation in which the crowd, gripped by throes of a shopping frenzy refused to allow first responders to attempt to save the man’s life?  Not that they had anything against 43-year-old Jdimytai Damour, the victim; it’s just that he picked a really inconvenient spot to die.

Perhaps you’d have closed that store and all other Wal-Marts in the US immediately.  Pay the employees, but close the doors for the weekend.  Forget Black Friday and its narrow margins and high volumes.

Perhaps you’d announced the end to Black Friday panic sales.   Go back to your everyday low price policy. 

Perhaps you’d do nothing.  After all, the customers want super cheap bargains, and the customer is king.

Suppose you’re the police.  Maybe you’d handle this situation like a riot, seal the store, and process every customer inside as a participant in manslaughter. 

With all the talk of an end to excess consumption, this sad story indicates something else entirely.  It indicates that many Americans are so obsessed by consumption that they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way. 

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!’" Cribbs said. "They kept shopping." [source]

Ed Morrissey points out that this murderous mayhem occurred in preparation for the coming of Christ. 

This Christmas, let’s take Seth Godin’s advice:  shop small, shop quality, shop local, shop handmade.  Let’s be satisfied with a single gift instead of measuring our happiness by the number of packages we open.  If you can’t bring yourself to do this the name of God, perhaps you can do it in the name of Jdimytai Damour.  Or of the unborn baby–less than one month from birth–who gave his life so that someone could get an HDTV for 30 percent off the already low, low price. 

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