Bill Clinton has a favorite Robert Rubin story. It’s 1999, and the Cabinet has gathered to discuss the business of the American people. Except no one can focus because the impeachment crisis is raging, and even the most veteran Washington power players are, for lack of a better term, freaking out. “It was amazing what he did,” says Clinton of Rubin, his then-Treasury Secretary. “He often didn’t say much, and I was stunned when he wanted to speak. He just sat there and in about three minutes summed up the whole thing in a very calm way, and had an incredibly positive impact on the attitude of the Cabinet. He said, ‘What we’ve got to do is get up tomorrow and go back to work, just like we did today, make good things happen, and trust the system and trust the American people. It’s going to be fine.’ And oh my God, you would’ve thought that somebody had gone around and lifted a rock off everybody’s shoulders.”

Rubin’s knack for spreading wisdom and tranquility has been the defining trait of his professional life. Whether economies across Asia are contaminating each other like kids on a school bus or the Mexican government rises one morning and decides to devalue the peso, Rubin’s hooded eyes and perpetually mussed gray hair give him the air of an ancient Galapagos tortoise. Whatever nastiness politics or the global economy may throw at him, he abides. [click on above link for more]

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