Sense on Cents

There was a point in time — pre-crisis, of course but in reality not all that long ago — when former Fed chair Alan Greenspan was viewed as almost god-like. Greenspan was supposedly smarter than all other central bankers. Well, those times have passed.

In retrospect, Greenspan has been shown to be a central player amid the cabal that controls our market and economy. In a recent commentary, Bloomberg’s Bill Cohan defines this group as The Club.

The Club has many wannabe members running around Washington and Wall Street, but the true inner circle of The Club consists of a small handful of power brokers and none bigger than Robert Rubin.

You remember Rubin, right? 

He of the $100+ million payout at Citigroup while the bank was run into the ground. He of the dismantling of any meaningful oversight of the derivatives markets that allowed for rampant and routine insider trading on Wall Street. He of shunning the whistleblower Richard Bowen who tried to draw attention to the massive volume of defective — if not fraudulently underwritten — mortgages purchased by Citi.

Yes, that Robert Rubin.

Many people — dare I say, most — in our country would hope that men like Robert Rubin might just fade away. But that is not how The Club works.

All we need to do is review the immediate history of the past 5 years to know that the power and money of The Club continues to wield its influence in immeasurable ways. In fact, this power and money has only gotten stronger since our crisis, despite the fact that many members of The Club were intimately involved in causing the crisis in the first place.

How will The Club next try to exert its hold over our nation? Making sure that one of its members, that being Larry Summers, runs the show at the Federal Reserve.  As Cohan so aptly states:

The real issue for Obama, who clearly remains in thrall to Summers and his substantial intellect, isn’t whether he picks Summers or Yellen. It is whether Bob Rubin and The Club will continue to dominate economic appointments and preside over a recovery that favors the rich.

I would not recommend betting against The Club.

Navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please pre-order a copy of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy, that will be published by Palgrave Macmillan on January 7, 2014.

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I have no business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved. 

This entry was posted on Monday, August 19th, 2013 at 9:27 AM and is filed under General, Robert Rubin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.