July 25, 2002

3:01 AM

On media darlings.Do you think this was deliberate or a coincidence? Who do you think are the other darlings of the mainstream media in USA and elsewhere (i.e. if you accept Slate's premise)?
posted by justlooking (5 comments total)

Actually, I find that pretty disturbing. Now I have to go look up more stuff about Rubin.
posted by dejah420 at 12:06 PM on July 25, 2002

Likewise. I happen to be a longtime admirer of Clinton's economic team and believe that the quality of mind of that team was exponentially better than this. I also hope that Rubin is in the clear on this. There is probably nothing to it. Rubin is WIDELY respected in wall street. A lot of people thought that he could literally talk the market up.

But the first thing that struck my mind when I read about Citibank's prepay scandal vis a vis Enron was - oh shit, Rubin made those calls to white house. So I was a little surprised when I didn't see it mentioned in NYT and WP this time.

I hate to find out again and again that all my heroes have feet of clay.
posted by justlooking at 3:57 PM on July 25, 2002

You think that's weird? How about the fact that virtully all the articles on the stock market completely neglect any discussion of underlying valuations. Or the fact that they never ask any non-brokerage-affiliated economists what they think of the economy. The financial press does very little aside from parroting the (public) pronouncements of Wall Street insiders. I not surprised that they neglect to mention Rubin as it would likely require them to do some digging around on their own.
posted by electro at 5:08 PM on July 25, 2002

I happen to be a longtime admirer of Clinton's economic team and believe that the quality of mind of that team was exponentially better than this.

j. bradford delong would agree :) he found this take on it, btw, taking on andrew sullivan no less!
posted by kliuless at 8:38 PM on July 25, 2002

Thanks for the link kliuless.

For what it is worth, yesterday's WSJ did a very good story on the current state of Citibank and covered this ground on detail. WP also referred to the Slate article in 'Media notes'.
posted by justlooking at 9:40 AM on July 27, 2002