Feet to the Fire
Treasury Secretary Larry Summers may have concluded by now that some guys do have all the luck. His fabled predecessor Robert Rubin seems to have left the cupboard bare.</br></br>The state of Summers's karma matters. He arguably has one of the four or five most important jobs in the world--along with guys named Clinton, Greenspan and Yeltsin. If the financial gods frown at Larry Summers at some point, they frown at nearly all of us. And they are curling a lip his way right now.</br></br>A stock market that soared to irrationally exuberant new heights under Rubin has yo-yoed downward under Summers. The strong dollar that helped wring inflation out of the U.S. economy has weakened erratically against the Japanese yen, tearing a hole in international monetary cooperation. And Summers was forced to defend himself in Congress last week against charges that he contributed to the ineffectiveness of U.S. aid to Russia.</br></br>This sea of troubles arrives as Summers plays symbolic host this week to the annual gathering here of the world's most important central bankers, finance ministers, private banking executives and the other assorted money men who have some connection to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.</br></br>Rubin managed these meetings with his customary aplomb, elegantly turning aside European schemes to weaken U.S. domination of the IMF and, to calm the panicky types, repeating that the world's economic fundamentals were solid.