Third World America - Arianna Huffington [56]
The state-of-the-art modern powerbroker is the aforementioned Robert Rubin.
His résumé is the personification of the flexian in action, as he moved seamlessly between political positions (director of the National Economic Council, Treasury secretary), private positions (a board member and senior counselor at Citigroup), advisory positions (including serving on the President’s Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and the SEC’s Market Oversight and Financial Services Advisory Committee), stints on a World Bank task force on growth and development, work as an unofficial economic adviser to President Obama, and his current position as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and founder of the Hamilton Project on challenges facing the U.S. economy.106
Early in 2010, he penned a lengthy essay in Newsweek called “Getting the Economy Back on Track,” in which he completely failed to explain or acknowledge—let alone apologize for—the key role he played in getting the economy off track in the first place.107
What grabbed my attention was not the 2,500-word piece, but the 28-word bio at the end of it: “Rubin is a former secretary of the Treasury (1995–99).108 He now serves as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow of the Harvard Corporation.” Given that the piece is about the economic meltdown, it’s telling that the bio doesn’t include his nearly ten years at Citigroup—during the very time that ended with the bank having to be saved by the American taxpayers.109
But that’s how our system “works” these days: Someone like Rubin is able to wreak destruction, collect an ungodly profit, then go along his merry way, pontificating about how “markets have an inherent and inevitable tendency—probably rooted in human nature—to go to excess, both on the upside and the downside.”110 This from the man who, as Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, was vociferous in opposing the regulation of derivatives—a key factor in the current economic crisis—and who lobbied the Treasury during the Bush years to prevent the downgrading of the credit rating of Enron—a debtor of Citigroup.111, 112
The hidden costs of such crony capitalism are monumental for the middle class. Why would people strive to build businesses—risking their money and their sweat equity—when they know there will always be someone on the other side of the table playing with a stacked deck?
THE VULCAN MIND MELD BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND WALL STREET
So the deck is stacked. The fix is in. The cards are marked. And our economy is as rigged as a carnival ring-toss game.
But it’s even worse than that. Corporate America’s takeover of our democracy runs deeper than the simple quid pro quo of a donor swaying a politician. It has captured our leaders’ hearts and minds. It’s one thing for moneyed interests to be able to buy influence. It’s another for that industry’s agenda to become conventional wisdom across party lines.
“Politics is like sales,” write Simon Johnson and James Kwak in 13 Bankers.113 “If you are trying to close a large deal with a major corporation, it helps to have friends on the inside, it helps to have buyers who see their fortunes aligned with yours, and it can even help to dangle the prospect of a high-paying job before the key decision-maker. But it is even better if the buyers really, independently want what you are selling. It is best of all if they believe that buying what you are selling is a symbol of their own judgment and sophistication—that buying your product marks them as part of the informed elite.”
That is what happened with the Vulcan mind meld between