Robert Rubin Off in Accounting Wilderness

Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary and one-time chairman of Citigroup Inc.'s executive committee, has put forth an odd idea for new accounting standards. Speaking last week at a conference on climate change, he said that companies should be required to include environmental costs that they impose on the rest of society as expenses in their own earnings reports.

Here's the relevant excerpt from Rubin's comments last week, as reported by Bloomberg News: