We were about to

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We were about to start a Bob Rubin Watch, <$NoAd$>wondering when the Dems chief macro-economic policy mandarin would step up and give us his take on the president’s phase-out bill. But our friend Sid Blumenthal gets him on the record to good effect …

“It’s a badly, badly flawed plan,” Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director, told me. “From a fiscal point of view it’s horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060.” He calculates that the transition costs of Bush’s plan for the first 10 years will be at least $2 trillion, and $4.5 trillion for the second 10 years. The exploding deficit would have an “adverse effect on interest rates, an adverse effect on consumption and housing prices, reduce productivity and growth, and crowd out debt capital to the private sector. Markets could begin to lose confidence in fiscal policy. The soundness of social security will be worse”.

Rubin adds that the stock market is hardly a sure bet. “You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people’s retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen.”

No member of the Faction he.

I guess Rubin’s just too anti-market.

And remember, you don’t need to be in Congress to be in the Fainthearted Faction. Associate memberships are available for other high-profile pols. Just ask Ed Rendell.

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