The front office asks columnists, fans, to read Treasury Secretary memoir

August 23rd, 2006 → 9:19 am @

“When Robert Rubin left Goldman Sachs 14 years ago and came here to join the Clinton administration, he brought a couple of big ideas with him. …

“The idea was simply that uncertainty was an inevitable part of life and only the foolish imagined they could eliminate it. To make the best possible decisions, bond traders and policy makers alike had to weigh every relevant piece of information, estimate the risks that something unexpected would happen and then make a judgment based on the odds, aware all the while that success could not be guaranteed. They had to understand that a good decision could produce a bad outcome. That is what uncertainty meant, and recognizing it maximized the chances that they would succeed next time.

“‘Unfortunately, Washington — the political process and the media — judges decisions based solely on outcomes, not on the quality of the decision making,’ Mr. Rubin wrote, with his co-author Jacob Weisberg, in his 2003 memoir, In an Uncertain World.”

–“This Fed Chief May Yet Get a Honeymoon,” David Leonhardt, The New York Times, August 23, 2006

Post Categories: Red Sox front office & Robert Rubin