Nassim Nicholas Taleb doesn’t know Rubin personally. He admits that his
antipathy, like that of so many Rubin critics, is fueled by symbolism. “He
represents everything that’s bad in America,” he says. “The evil in one person
represented. When we write the history, he will be seen as the John Gotti of our
era. He’s the Teflon Don of Wall Street.” Taleb wants systemic change to prevent
what he terms the “Bob Rubin Problem”—the commingling of Wall Street interests
and the public trust—“so people like him don’t exist.”
People like Rubin—brilliant, powerful, and fueled by certainty—will always exist. They’ll act selfishly and selflessly. They’ll advance whole societies and their own interests, and their paradoxes will be endlessly debated. “This is a guy who is as controlled as any human being I know,” says Sandy Lewis, who as an arbitrageur worked with Rubin at Goldman Sachs. “He’s pleasant company. He’s compulsively dishonest in a certain way, and compulsively honest in other ways.” Nobody’s perfect. But for $126 million, they ought to show up.
- Rethinking Robert Rubin
People like Rubin—brilliant, powerful, and fueled by certainty—will always exist. They’ll act selfishly and selflessly. They’ll advance whole societies and their own interests, and their paradoxes will be endlessly debated. “This is a guy who is as controlled as any human being I know,” says Sandy Lewis, who as an arbitrageur worked with Rubin at Goldman Sachs. “He’s pleasant company. He’s compulsively dishonest in a certain way, and compulsively honest in other ways.” Nobody’s perfect. But for $126 million, they ought to show up.
- Rethinking Robert Rubin
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