Yes We Can! (Get Rid of Bob Rubin)

[Cowpunk]

As you may know, former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama advisor Robert Rubin, a perennial backer of so-called "free trade" and corporate deregulation, has played significant rolls in both the near-collapse of the World's Economy and the downfall of the world's biggest bank, all the while insisting that there was nothing really worrisome going on.

Now Mr. Rubin is being sued on accusations that he knew Citi was in trouble and dumped his holdings while pretending everything was hunky dory:

The shareholders contend that Rubin, former Chief Executive Charles Prince and other current and former executives engaged in "suspicious" stock sales that were "made at times calculated to maximize the personal benefits from undisclosed inside information."

Together, the insiders sold nearly 3 million shares of Citigroup stock at artificially inflated prices for combined proceeds of about $150 million in the period from January 1, 2004, through February 22, 2008, the lawsuit contends. The complaint says the sales "were unusual in timing and/or amount."

Rubin registered proceeds of $30.6 million, while Prince got $26.5 million, former Chief Operating Officer Robert Druskin got nearly $32 million and former Global Wealth Management unit chief Todd Thomson got $25.7 million, according to the lawsuit.

The four were not immediately available for comment.

CEO Vikram Pandit is not named as a defendant. Pandit replaced Prince last December.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other stockholders. The defendants are due to file their response early next year.

The lead plaintiff is a group of ex-employees and directors at Automated Trading Desk, an electronic trading firm sold to Citigroup for $680 million in 2007.

The group, represented by law firm Kirby McInerney LLP, contends that Citigroup shares they received as part of the buyout -- valued at $52 each at the time -- were artificially inflated because of misstatements and deception by the defendants.

"Defendants knew full well that Citigroup was exposed to increasingly risky assets and decreasingly valuable assets, primarily in the form of mortgage-related instruments, and dissembled, concealed and schemed to avoid having those facts fall into public hands," according to the complaint.

David Sirota, who's gets a hat tip for the above quote, writes that Rubin will likely suffer no ill consequences from this latest revalation, be it true or not:

Rubin, to be sure, is innocent until proven guilty. But even in light of that, you'd think he'd that with his since-humiliated policy agenda, his involvement in the specific meltdown that's destroying the economy, and now serious legal allegations being made against him in court, he'd politically radioactive now. Indeed, had, say, a labor union president used his time in government office to push policies that subsequently crushed the economy, then gotten out of government and headed a union that had a direct hand in an economic meltdown, and then been sued in court for corruption, that labor leader wouldn't be allowed within a hundred feet of a freshman Democratic congressman, much less the inner circle of the President of the United States.

But, then, the unspoken truth in the Democratic Party is that the campaign rhetoric is for the working-class union folk, and the levers of power are for Wall Streeters. So my guess is that Rubin remains a Terminator - a cyborg-like figure who cannot be politically killed no matter how many bullets he walks into. That's the nature of Big Money in the Democratic Party - it grants you almost complete immortality.

I happen to disagree with David. The reason is simple: We have a possible ally of great strength, should we choose to try and make Rubin "radioactive". That potential ally is the right wing media. Right now, right wingers are desperate for any kind of news that may discredit Democrats. If ever there was a time to drive a stake into the heart of the Republican-light DLC's economic champion(Alan Greenspan once joked that he considered Rubin the best Republican secretary of the treasury ever), the time is now.

It is doubtful that the higher-ups in the GOP would desire to take down Rubin, so don't expect any talking points to be diseminated on our behalf. This would require a ground-up, grassroots effort. There are precedents in the GOP for such action-the right wing's obsession with illegal immigration, and the Ron Paul business. If populist hatred for Rubin on both sides of the aisle becomes a cacophany, Mr. Obama may be forced to disown him. The political fallout from this would be negligable. Obama is not tied closely to Rubin, and Rubin's tie to the Clintons is old news. The benefit to our country, however, would be immeasurable. Robert Rubin's incompetence is a threat to our economic security, now and in the future. He needs to go away.