Robert Rubin: The Man at the Nexus of Big Business and Big Government

For anyone who thinks that big Wall Street and Big Government aren’t joined at the hip, promoting policies and laws that keep each other fat and happy often at the expense of the American taxpayer, consider the career of Robert Rubin.

Rubin, of course, is largely gone from the public scene after spending 10 disastrous years as a board member and senior executive at Citigroup, the banking giant that epitomizes all that is wrong with American finance, and before that, a largely successful run as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration, which he joined after running another controversial bank, Goldman Sachs. But his legacy looms large, mainly because I believe he was one of the reasons why the financial crisis occurred in the first place.

Citigroup, with nearly $1 trillion in customer deposits, is and always was Too Big To Fail, meaning that because of its size and scope, and the fact that it safe keeps FDIC insured customer deposits, the Federal government wouldn’t just let the bank implode as it did Lehman Brothers.

Full Story Charles Gasparino: Robert Rubin: The Man at the Nexus of Big Business and Big Government.