Robert Rubin Quotes

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.

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

We invest in higher education because there’s a broad public purpose. Our colleges and universities are seen, rightly, as centers of learning, but they are also engines of economic growth... Institutions of higher education spur early-stage research of all kinds, create environments for commercializing that research, provide a base for start-up and technology hubs, and serve as a mentoring incubator for new generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders.

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.

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.

Higher education helps create the kind of citizenry that is central to a democracy’s ability to function and perhaps even to survive.

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.

While the FMLA [<nowiki/>Family and Medical Leave Act] was a landmark achievement, it doesn’t go far enough. American workers and businesses need a universal paid leave program.

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.

Some argue that many dire predictions raised at the start of Mr. Trump’s term did not come to pass. But he has expressed regret that his term was less radical than he would have liked — and has promised that his second term would be nothing like the first. From 2017 to 2021, Mr. Trump, while extreme in many respects, was constrained by key appointees who came from the traditional conservative establishment and by the need to appeal to the business community as he sought re-election. If he wins this November, he’s made clear that he’ll choose appointees who will be submissive to him, and he will have no looming re-election campaign providing an incentive to curb his most extreme impulses.

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.

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.

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.

With its underlying principles of free expression and academic freedom, the university system is one of the nation’s great strengths. It is not to be taken for granted. Undermining higher education would harm all Americans, weakening our country and making us less able to confront the many challenges we face.

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.