Robert E. Rubin Quotes

We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature.

For those of us in the financial world, Black Friday has a strong negative connotation, referring to a stock market catastrophe.

Normally, the market peaks before bad news emerges. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what happened in 2000.

The upward economic movement in America has undoubtedly reached its end – the crisis has come.

There will be no repetition of the break yesterday …. I have no fear of another comparable decline.

Financial markets have a tendency to go to excess.

From time to time, capitalism has a tendency to implode.

There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash..

To be sure, booms and busts will come and go. But their severity can vary dramatically based on the policies in place to prevent them. With stronger regulations, neither the housing and derivatives bubbles nor the eventual crash would have been so bad.

… a pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons..

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that it is hard for a market to keep going up when more and more people are getting out.

When valuation confidence falls, it means that stock markets are perceived as overpriced.

I think the stock market is a very dangerous place to be at the present time. In fact, the stock market today is almost identical to where it was in October 2007 and then there was a $7 trillion crash and before that in March 2000.

History tells us that sharp reversals in confidence occur abruptly.

Markets are self-regulating only because some brave investors are prepared to bet against the market trend.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions …

Nothing would assure a recession more than a significant drop in housing prices.

Markets don’t always self-correct fast enough. Until they do there is an immense amount of damage that has been done which is why we need government intervention.

… a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche.

I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool's paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future

Shaking the confidence in the American economy. This will lead investors to refrain from investing in America or participating in American companies, thus accelerating the fall of the American economy.

The markets do numbers, not nuance.

Banks are employing risky derivatives strategies to goose up returns….the interbank market could freeze up, and one could well have a full blown financial crisis.

I have 13 bankers in my office, and they say that if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II.

An emerging market is a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market