Robert Rubin Quotes

Moments after being sworn in as Treasury Secretary in 1995, I stood in the Oval Office to advise the president on how to address the threat posed to us by the unfolding economic crisis in Mexico, an experience repeated two years later during the Asian financial crisis. I know what it's like to recommend complex responses with no certainty of success.

One does not have to agree with the sentiments being expressed by a speaker in order to be troubled by the idea that they would be suppressed because of their content.

Internalizing the core tenet of Professor Demos’s teaching — weighing risk and analyzing odds and trade-offs — was central to everything I did professionally in the decades ahead in finance and government.

People in prison are part of America, as are those who have been released. They are part of our society. And we have a powerful stake in their success.

We have an imperative need to address our unsustainable longer-term fiscal trajectory with sound economic policies. Few elected officials want to face this fact, but, at the very least, they should not make matters worse.

ECB [European Central Bank] President Mario Draghi’s famous promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the eurozone was a masterly move to buy time. But monetary policy cannot solve the currency union’s problems.

For our country to succeed economically, our market-based system must function alongside strong, effective government. Strong, effective government, in turn, requires a functioning democratic process.

Nearly every element of Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda would create great risk of economic harm. In aggregate, there is a high likelihood that his agenda would lead to chaos and unpredictability, including global instability, in that way reducing investment and business activity. Meanwhile, inflation would be increased by tariffs, immigration restrictions and larger fiscal deficits. Some may feel that we made it through one Trump term and are thus likely to make it through another. But a more apt analogy is that after we survived one round of economic Russian roulette, Donald Trump is asking us to take another spin — only this time with many more bullets in the chamber. That would be a very dangerous game.

A refundable child tax credit can decrease infant mortality; improve the health and life expectancy of poor children and their parents; reduce exposure to abuse and neglect; reduce long-term health-care costs; and increase the future productivity, earnings and tax payments of child beneficiaries.

We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment — or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc.

Markets go up, markets go down.

When millions of people remain mired in poverty, no matter how hard they work, our whole economy suffers. Consigning millions of people to the economic margins has a serious adverse effect on the economy for all of us.

To close great and growing wealth and income gaps, and to raise badly needed revenue for public investment, it’s not enough to lift the bottom up; we need to ask more of those at the top, too.

Some people I’ve encountered in various phases of my career seem more certain about everything than I am about anything.

We’ve spoken to many leaders in business and finance who, when it comes to economic policy, are open to the premise that Mr. Trump is a normal presidential candidate. We strongly disagree. The two of us have been involved in business, government and policy for many years, with more than a century of experience between us. We’ve worked with elected officials and business leaders across the ideological spectrum... When it comes to economic policy, Mr. Trump is not a remotely normal candidate. A second Trump term would pose enormous risks to our economy.