The Rubin con goes on

The corruptions of journalism were on full display when CNN's Fareed Zakaria turned to Robert Rubin this past Sunday for advice on how to fix the financial crisis that he, as much as anyone, caused. I was trapped on a treadmill in front of an overhead television and unable to turn the thing off in time to avoid this assault on my mental and physical health. As a result I was forced to hear Rubin, Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, insist that he always favored regulating toxic derivatives and is therefore not at all responsible for the ensuing economic meltdown. He was responding to the sole critical question from the CNN host, who quoted a question by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: "Did all the senior members of the [Obama] economics team have to be protégés of Robert Rubin, the apostle of financial deregulation?" Unfortunately, Zakaria just rolled over when his guest simply lied in response: "First of all, I am not the apostle of financial deregulation. Quite the contrary. "