14th February 2000
DID HE KNOW SOMETHING? Former US Secretary to the Treasury Robert Rubin was, and is, an executive of Goldman Sachs & Co. In joining the Clinton administration, Rubin was keeping a traditionally close relationship between Goldman Sachs and the US Government.
A former senior partner of Goldman Sachs, Sydney J. Weinberg - according to his obituary in The New York Times, - was the 'unofficial' adviser to five US Presidents, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.
Robert Rubin was not only co-chairman of Goldman Sachs & Co, but was also chairman of the finance committee of the Carnegie Corporation. At the time he joined the Clinton administration his Goldman Sachs holdings alone were reported at about $US100 million. His reported income from his brokerage partnership alone was reported at $US26.5 million in 1992.
In July last year he stepped aside from the US Treasury Secretaryship, handing the reins to Lawrence Summers.
As well as involvement with Goldman Sachs, Rubin is currently chairman of the executive committee of Citigroup Inc., the world's largest financial services company. (Banker Malcolm Turnbull is the Australian partner and operative for Goldman Sachs & Co.)
In a major speech to the London School of Economics, reported by The Australian Financial Review, (4/2/2000), Rubin warned of the serious danger of global crisis. He attacked the idea that computer technology lessened the danger. The article added:
" … Mr Rubin …. said he had been struck since returning to New York about the pervading "assumption that all will always be well" in financial markets. Instead, he said, investors would do well to consider increasing risks.
"Record trade deficits, tight labor markets, low personal savings rates, and stock valuations that are high by conventional measures, are all dismissed as minor caveats to the positive outlook and global economies instead of being seen as possible - not certain, but possible - excesses and imbalances that may pose real risk to our economic well-being," Mr Rubin said. "The risk is that at some point the excesses may simply become too great and the inevitable consequences follow. …"
Rubin's remarks could well have been pointed straight at Australia. Our perennial trade deficit has given us a foreign debt touching a quarter-of-a-trillion dollars; household savings are at an all time low, and the social breakdown worsening all the time. Any tightening of the financial scene - and it's already started - is going to produce enough social misery to threaten the stability of government.
Those with their hands on the tiller of international finance know what's coming. Is that why Rubin stepped aside last July?
CHINESE SPELL IT OUT FOR AUSTRALIA: In what must be the most humiliating rebuff for the soft Federal Government of Australia, the Chinese have bluntly spelled out the true position on illegal immigration. The Australian (4/2/00) reported:
"A senior Chinese official has blamed Australia's lax immigration laws for encouraging the exodus of illegal immigrants from China.
Guo Xiqin, one of China's top border officials, said Canada and Australia "offer settlement rights to some immigrants" which lured more into taking the risk to try to enter the country unlawfully.
"If most stowaways captured are allowed to stay, it is very difficult to cool down others' desire to sneak into another country illegally," he said. …. Mr Guo … blamed foreign "snakehead" gangs for the growing number of illegal immigrants going abroad. …. Most of the snakehead gangs consisted of foreigners or Chinese who lived abroad, and it was up to the authorities in those countries to clamp down on the smugglers …..
"Most stowaways are ordinary people and have never been wrongly treated in their home towns," he told the English language China Daily. "The applications of some for political asylum are merely pretexts for staying there."
Home truths are never comfortable. Mr Guo Xiqin has done Australia a service by pointing out to politicians what many ordinary Australians know to be true.
THE POOR OLD BANKS: Australians will be thrilled to hear the latest news that the "gang-of-four" (Westpac, ANZ, NAB and the Commonwealth) are now making between them over $19 million in profits every day. That's a dollar-a-day for each Australian, four dollars-a-day for each average family of four, or $1,460 for the average mum, dad and two kids each year. It obviously isn't enough, so it will be with moist eyes and a tug at the heartstrings that Australians will thankfully accept the half-per-cent interest rise - imposed, you understand, for our own benefit and the good of the nation!