By James Kwak

First Bill Clinton said he got bad advice from Robert Rubin on derivatives. Then a Clinton adviser issued a statement essentially taking it back and blaming Alan Greenspan. (Jennifer Taub discussed some of the substantive issues on this blog.) Dan Froomkin asked Rubin, who said, “I thought we should regulate derivatives; I thought so when I was at Goldman Sachs and I thought so afterwards.” But Froomkin points out that Rubin was part of the team that suppressed Brooksley Born’s attempt to regulate derivatives back in 1998.

Brad DeLong defends Rubin, although it seems like a somewhat lukewarm defense. DeLong’s point #3 is: “Brooksley Born and her organization are the wrong people to regulate derivatives.” (That’s a statement of Rubin”s thinking at the time.)  Norman Carleton, a Treasury official at the time, also defends Rubin with two posts on his blog that spell out DeLong’s point #3. In the first post, he says that Rubin favored regulation but was concerned with giving the CFTC jurisdiction over the OTC derivatives market. In the second, he explains the issue (legal certainty of existing contracts, something I don’t really want to get into here, so go read the argument there) and concludes with this logically plausible but somewhat bizarre argument:

“Rubin had proposed to Born that, instead of the CFTC asking questions about the need for regulation of the OTC derivatives market, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets issue the questions.  Born point blank refused this suggestion, thus pushing Rubin into Greenspan’s camp, much to the relief of ISDA and other Wall Street groups lobbying on this issue.  They knew they had a problem with Rubin.

“Brooksley Born was so sure she was right in her legal position that she could not compromise in face of the practical and political realities.  While, not to make too fine a point about it, she has been proven right and Greenspan wrong about the dangers of the OTC derivatives market, Greenspan was the better politician.  History might have been different if Born had agreed to Rubin’s suggestion.”

Continue reading “What Did Robert Rubin Think About Derivatives?” →