In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington (Hardcover)

~ Robert E. Rubin (Author), (Author) "ON THE EVENING OF January 10, 1995, I stood on the Great Seal woven into the carpet of the Oval Office and swore to uphold..." (more)
Key Phrases: arbitrage department, deficit reduction plan, capital gains tax cut, White House, United States, Goldman Sachs (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As Secretary of the Treasury, Bob Rubin ranked with the best.  This drama-packed account of his years on the job should be read by all who are interested in what happens when politics and economics intersect."
-Warren Buffett

"Robert Rubin in one of the most brilliant and honorable wise men of our era, and he has produced an extraordinary book. It is both fascinating and readable. With charming candor and a wealth of lessons, it provides an exciting account of his life on Wall Street
and of his tenure as the presidential adviser and Treasury Secretary. But it is also a very personal book filled with tales and insights about his relationships with such key players as Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers and President Bill Clinton. This is destined to be one of the most important books, as well as one of the most enjoyable and enlightening, published in our time."
-Walter Isaacson

"Bob Rubin takes us behind the closed doors and into the nerve center of Wall Street, the White House and the Treasury Department during a historic time in the global economy. It's a fascinating and highly instructive tale told by a man who is uniquely qualified to guide us through these monumental political and economic challenges."
-Tom Brokaw

"Robert Rubin served with distinction as Secretary of Treasury during a period of turbulence in international financial markets. He has now written an engrossing and thoughtful book about his experiences. Even those who do not agree with some of his conclusions, will find this important reading."
-Henry Kissinger

"When historians look back on the 1990s, they will almost certainly ask how the greatest economic expansion in American history happened. Robert Rubin's forthright and fascinating memoir will be the place to begin. With the meticulousness of a scholar and an appealing lack of vanity, Rubin has written the kind of book that important figures in history should write but seldom do."
-Michael Beschloss -- Review

Review

"As Secretary of the Treasury, Bob Rubin ranked with the best.  This drama-packed account of his years on the job should be read by all who are interested in what happens when politics and economics intersect."
-Warren Buffett

"Robert Rubin in one of the most brilliant and honorable wise men of our era, and he has produced an extraordinary book. It is both fascinating and readable. With charming candor and a wealth of lessons, it provides an exciting account of his life on Wall Street
and of his tenure as the presidential adviser and Treasury Secretary. But it is also a very personal book filled with tales and insights about his relationships with such key players as Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers and President Bill Clinton. This is destined to be one of the most important books, as well as one of the most enjoyable and enlightening, published in our time."
-Walter Isaacson

"Bob Rubin takes us behind the closed doors and into the nerve center of Wall Street, the White House and the Treasury Department during a historic time in the global economy. It's a fascinating and highly instructive tale told by a man who is uniquely qualified to guide us through these monumental political and economic challenges."
-Tom Brokaw

"Robert Rubin served with distinction as Secretary of Treasury during a period of turbulence in international financial markets. He has now written an engrossing and thoughtful book about his experiences. Even those who do not agree with some of his conclusions, will find this important reading."
-Henry Kissinger

"When historians look back on the 1990s, they will almost certainly ask how the greatest economic expansion in American history happened. Robert Rubin's forthright and fascinating memoir will be the place to begin. With the meticulousness of a scholar and an appealing lack of vanity, Rubin has written the kind of book that important figures in history should write but seldom do."
-Michael Beschloss

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (November 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375505857
• ISBN-13: 978-0375505850
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #272,735 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid Serious Overview of Core Economic Security Issues, December 7, 2003

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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Edit of 22 Sep 08 to recognize that Rubin did not bail out Mexico, he bailed out Wall Street, and Paulson is about to rip the heart out of every American taxpayer in the boldest and most insane national treasury rip-off anyone on this planet could conceive of....we don't need a Wall Street bail-out, we need a complete recall of both the Executive and the Legislative leaderships--a fresh start. These pigs have destroyed the nation--see my new book, free online from 24 Sep, ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig.

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to recommend update and reissuance in collaboration with John Bogle, author of The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions - and What to Do About It and a few others whose books are linked below.

Rubin is self-effacing and not at all, in any way, claiming personal credit for how well it went as America experienced one of its greatest economic booms, despite some rather scary international threats to our economic security. I believe this will be a classic reference for years to come.

1) Early on, and then throughout the book, Rubin does a fine job of documenting and explaining why markets, which are relatively autonomous beasts, and at least as important as governments and government policies, in setting the economic security environment.

2) A corollary to the above, but all the more important because it dovetails precisely with Henry Kissinger's caution ("Does America Need a Foreign Policy"), is Rubin's detailed articulation of how U.S. politics and US policy mechanisms are not now well-suited to coping with the new risks of the global economy. The speed and reach of the marketplace is now such that the industrial-era government bureaucracies and 1970's information technology stovepipes are completely inadequate--however well-intentioned a President might be, the current structure and current approaches to establishing economic strategies and policies are NOT OKAY.

3) Rubin is quite excellent in explaining in a very understandable manner how specific fiscal policies toward other states (e.g. Mexico) can be directly related to consequences in terms of illegal immigration (surging if Mexico is allowed to collapse), illegal drugs and crime, and trade.

4) Especially helpful in this book is its emphasis on the importance of educating the American public as a pre-requisite to the politics of making the right economic decisions for America. Rubin quotes Clinton as saying that one of his (President Clinton's) greatest lessons learned from his two-term Presidency was the need to do the public education (political strategy) before the public politics and deal-making. Senator David Boren (today President of the University of Oklahoma) and Mr. David Gergen have made this point earlier ("Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the 21st Century"), but Rubin's focus merits strong emphasis, because in combination, our mediocre policy structure and our mediocre public understanding combine to create not one but two devastating Achilles' heels for US economic security policy-making.

5) Rubin excels at documenting the direct relationship between poverty and inner-city distress and poor education of important segments of America's population, and its economic well-being. He extends this analysis internationally, focusing on how vital it is to extend the fruits of prosperity across all nations and peoples, if the US is itself to have sustainable economic stability and prosperity.

6) The book is a case study in decision-making, a manual of how to and how not to approach problems for which, as he notes with frequency, there are no certain outcomes. I was very impressed by his acute sensitivity to the fact that most subordinates are incapable of speaking utter truth to their bosses--they pull their punches. This is equally true, as he explicitly notes, of Chief Executive Officers invited to meet with the President. Rubin appears gifted in his ability to draw out the concerns and negatives from all subordinates, with a special kindness extended by him to the most junior or front-line subordinates, a kindness that is repaid in full with honest opinion.

7) I noticed some very strong observations from Rubin on the inability of the Department of State and of the Central Intelligence Agency to provide him with core information that he needed on Indonesia, among other fiscal hot spots. Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore turned out to be much more useful to him in understanding the context and possibilities. From this Rubin draws the lesson that the Department of State needs to get smarter about economics, and that a new kind of Foreign Service Officer is needed, one that is not just following political matters, but economic matters. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that State needs to migrate from the old POL-MIL mind-set, to a new POL-ECON mindset. CIA must of course get much better at understanding demography, public health, economics, and infrastructure issues down to the province and township letters, something that will require them to finally take Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) much more seriously, and to become competent in 29+ languages.

8) "Rubin's Rules", actually prepared by his staff as a going-away gift when he departed Treasury, are listed on page 251, with an 11th rule on page 252, and are alone worth the price of the book. They will not be repeated here, they are precious.

9) Rubin is critical of the private sector for having over-invested in Third World ventures without doing the due diligence related to risk assessment, and he ventures into some discussion of the importance of defining and communicating best practices, codes and standards for debt management, bankruptcy, deposit insurance, and bank supervision. I could not help but reflect on how much more important the ISO might become if it also becomes central to economic security and stability by contributing a standards process that helps reduce and mitigate risk for all.

10) There are many other gems in this book, from his review of "deficit economics" (and why it is an idiot idea writ large), to how Monica Lewinsky cost the US taxpayer much more than the cost of the impeachment proceedings, to the need to always review old assumptions, to the dangerous reliance by Wall Street on models (as with Long-Term Capital Management failure), to the need to redefine GDP calculations (in addition to deducting negative investments like prisons and health care that others have recommended, Rubin suggests that the presence or absence of positive investments related to environmental sustainability need to be included).

This is a solid serious book about core economic security issues. I venture to say that no one could run for President, or be an effective President, without absorbing all that Robert E. Rubin has to teach us. His assistant author, Jacob Weisberg, is to be congratulated for helping bring this extraordinary work to the marketplace. We all benefit.

See also with reviews:
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Al On America

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than just Rubinomics, November 29, 2003

By	john doe (john doe) - See all my reviews

As other reviewers have mentioned, Rubin spends much of this book detailing the struggles of dealing with the "global economy" with his pals, Greenspan and Summers. Rubin also makes it clear that he feels current economic policy is undisciplined and unsound.

While these issues make up the bulk of the book and are surely why it was written, I was most engaged by Rubin's philosophies on keeping work pressures in perspective ("if you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs...") and on the imminent threat posed by the developed world's continued apathy toward the impoverished.

Will you enjoy this book more if you agree with Rubin's ideas about economic policy? Yes. Can you find in this book interesting takeways that will give pause for thought if you don't? Yes.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Page turning economics, January 17, 2004

By	Jonathon Lever (Green River, WY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Robert Rubin, in recounting his years on Wall Street and years in the White House has provided an excellent description of the politics of money, no matter where you are. Rubin recounts his 26 years at Goldman Sachs and describes how the company rose to great stature. He then goes on to describe some of the difficulties that they encountered. In large part, because of politics, not the Washington politics, but office politics. This part of the story was fascinating and Rubin even manages to make something like arbitrage somewhat understandable to the average reader.

The real meat of the story comes when he moves to Washington to work in the Clinton administration. Rubin describes the problems that he and the administration faced in trying to deal with specific financial crises around the world and the difficulty of solving those crises in a political environment that is filled with ad hominem attacks. His central theme is that of an internationalist, the United States must work to promote solid economic systems around the world because it is in our best interests to do so. If we simply sit by and let things happen, the repurcussions will come back to haunt us.

There are several examples that Rubin utilizes to make his point, from Mexico to Russia to Indonesia, he highlights the various economic problems that he encountered as secretary of the treasury. The descriptions he provides of the solutions point to the fact that not all nations can simply pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and make it on their own. Sometimes assistance is necessary. In making this case, he also makes a strong case for both the IMF and the World Bank.

When I received this book, I had to wonder how interesting the job of the Treasury Secretary could be, especially compared to the Secretary of State, or National Security Advisor, but Rubin makes the role of the Treasury Secretary stand out as more than the person who signs the dollar bills. His insights into economics, both supply side and Keynesian is the most readable that I have seen. The explanations and difficulties are covered and even though there is a bias, he is not unwilling to admit that there are flaws.

In addition to the clear writing and explanations, Rubin keeps to the topic he is addressing, his role as Treasury secretary or manager of a major company. He mentions problems that the Clinton administration went through, but only in the context of how it affected his job, which was minimal. When addressing the issues of working at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, he stays on those issues and doesn't go off into major tangents. Finally, he does show that he has a sense of humor and others in the government have one too.

When I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. This is a fascinating insight into the world of finance.