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Rubin Slithers

November 29, 2008 – Comments (4)

Really, how much oversight can you expect from the poor guy. Why should he take any blame, or admit to any mistakes?

"Nobody was prepared for this," Mr. Rubin said in an interview. He cited former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as another example of someone whose reputation has been unfairly damaged by the crisis.

Mr. Rubin, senior counselor and a director at Citigroup, acknowledged that he was involved in a board decision to ramp up risk-taking in 2004 and 2005, even though he was warning publicly that investors were taking too much risk. He said if executives had executed the plan properly, the bank's losses would have been less.

Phew. It's all those other guys' faults. The plan was sound, just the execution...

Mr. Rubin said his pay was justified and that there were higher-paying opportunities available to him. "I bet there's not a single year where I couldn't have gone somewhere else and made more," he said. He turned down his bonus last year, telling the board the money could be better spent elsewhere.

Asked if he had any regrets, Mr. Rubin said: "I guess that I don't think of it quite that way," adding that "if you look back from now, there's an enormous amount that needs to be learned."

Mr. Rubin's effort to salvage his reputation comes just after Chief Executive Vikram Pandit appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose show. Mr. Pandit, too, blamed the overall financial crisis, not Citigroup, for the problems that led the government to decide to inject money into the bank for a second time this fall.

Unbelievable. These guys put the bank in a position to fail, and when it nearly does, they're completely blameless. "Hey, it's not our fault we didn't buy flood insurance. You can barely see the river from here, and look at all those other houses down the street."

These two are a prime reason why Citi deserves to die. Too bad all those cozy political relationships that helped grease the way for its enormity now make it impossible to let the bloated whale be picked apart by those who like carrion.

Read all about it.