Obama: Investors' pal, Rubin's follower?

"If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the president," reports Bloomberg Business Week here. Stock prices have rebounded, home prices have stabilized, "the economy is expanding again... the economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the most in three year...

"The reigning economic approach in Democratic circles for most of the past two decades has been Rubinomics, a term coined to describe a set of priorities fashioned in the 1990s by then- President Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York [and disgraced former Citigroup adviser]. Rubinomics was a three-legged stool consisting of restrained government spending, lower budget deficits and open trade, designed to reassure financial markets, keep capital flowing and put the country on a path to prosperity."

Obama's budgets, by contrast, contain "record deficits." But in many ways Obama represents an extension of the Clinton-Rubin Program, not surprising when you note "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Chairman Lawrence Summers and White House budget director Peter Orszag -- are Rubin protégés."

Obama refused calls to socialize the banks. "Obama's regulatory-reform plan largely leaves the financial industry's structure intact and ignores proposals to break up large financial institutions, unlike the reforms pursued after the market crash in 1929. Amid an uproar over bonuses at government- assisted banks, Obama, for the most part, has chosen to respect private-employment contracts. In short, Obama's instincts during the crisis were Rubin-esque."