I’ve previously noted that Brad DeLong, an ardent neo-Keynesian operating out of Berkeley who puts out a terrific blog on all things economic, has a deplorable habit of censoring my comments when I say things Brad doesn’t want to hear. So I’m happy to say that Brad doesn’t censor everyone who criticizes him, an excellent case in point being this posting, “I Am Now, and Have for Eighteen Years Been, a Rubinite…,” in which Brad defends two of his buddies, Robert Rubin and Gene Sperling.
I encourage you to read the comments, which almost uniformly take Brad over the coals for his defense of his comrades, which defense, with its air of forced jocularity and evasive wit, fairly reeks of flop sweat. I myself have been, in the past, fairly Rubinesque, or at least Rubinish in my economic thinking, if one can call it that, but there’s no denying that Bob’s record, particularly the $100 mill he picked up while “advising” Citigroup into a multi-billion-dollar ditch that the American taxpayer had to dig them out of, has a few blemishes.
As for Gene, now up for consideration to replace Larry “the Mouth” Summers as director of the National Economic Council, perhaps, as Brad says, “When Goldman Sachs paid Gene $1,000,000 to ‘consult’ on its charitable contributions, it may have been a bet on their part that Gene actually knew something nobody else they could quickly find and trust did about the flow of money to social-service organizations.” Yes, it may have been, just as when Citigroup chief Sandy Weil gave $1,000,000 to the 92nd Street Y pre-school he may have been wanting to help little kids (read the footnote of this post for backstory). But I don’t fucking think so.*
*I mean “charitable.” Doesn’t that mean “for free”? Who makes $1 million doing charitable work? But on Wall Street I guess it’s OK.
