Bob Rubin and Joe Stiglitz Found Something They Agree On
The deficit hawk and the dove favor automatic stabilizers to keep the economy in balance
Here’s the inside story of how Robert Rubin and Joseph Stiglitz wound up sharing a byline on a policy brief on economic stabilization released Jan. 19 by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. It’s an attention-getting collaboration because Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist, is famously opposed to Rubinomics, the budget-balancing philosophy of Rubin, who was President Clinton’s Treasury secretary.
Rubin and Stiglitz were brought together by a third luminary, Peter Orszag, the chief executive officer of financial advisory at the investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. LLC. “Bob and I were discussing the problems with top-down fiscal anchors and the uncertainty surrounding interest rates,” Orszag writes in an email.