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Clinton's Money Men Sing in Tune With Bush's
Former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin talks credit at the Brookings Institute.
(By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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The Clinton crowd was more critical when the subject turned to regulating credit rating agencies.
"Enron was to accounting firms as subprime is to rating agencies," Summers said. "I am very skeptical of market-based regulation here. When a plane crashes, the airline's stock price will go down. But we do not view that as a sufficient substitute for air safety regulation."
Could the crisis have been avoided?
"Lots of people saw it coming, but most people didn't necessarily act on what they saw coming," said Eric Mindich, a hedge fund executive who was on the panel. "I am a big believer in Noah's law, which says that you get rewarded not for predicting rain, but for building arks."
"There's a middle group, which is forming a committee to talk about building an ark, which, in the 202 area code, we like to take credit for," Summers said.
"I think Larry makes a lot of," said Rubin, before catching himself, "well, possibly some number of reasonably plausible points."
"I manage to make myself heard somehow," Summers said.
