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To: lorne who wrote (36088)	6/29/1999 3:29:00 PM
From: Alex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116753

Rubin comes clean on gravity of Asian crisis WASHINGTON, TUESDAY Defending the actions he and other policy makers took to handle the worst global financial crisis in 50 years, the US Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, said there were nail-biting times when he feared the situation could spin out of control. Mr Rubin, 60, appeared relaxed as he met a small group of reporters for a final interview before his scheduled departure from US President Bill Clinton's Cabinet next week. Praised by Mr Clinton as the greatest treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton, Mr Rubin had to deal in his early days in office with the Mexican peso crisis of 1995 and for the past two years has struggled to fashion a rescue effort for the far-worse Asian currency crisis, which began in Thailand in July 1997. ''The international community faced an unprecedented situation and very complex situation of having the thing that we had always feared actually happen - contagion on a large scale,'' Mr Rubin said of the Asian crisis. ''There were a number of times when this thing could have become far worse than it did.'' Mr Rubin said one such time was December 1997 when South Korea came close to defaulting on its foreign obligations, and another time was last year when Russia's default on billions of dollars of foreign loans rattled global financial markets. Critics charge that the International Monetary Fund, which took the lead in assembling more than $100 billion in rescue packages for Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Russia and Brazil, wasted the money because it failed to keep the crisis countries from falling into steep recessions or halt the spread of the crisis. Mr Rubin disagreed with this view, arguing that the IMF's decisions were for the most part correct. ''Without the IMF, without the international community, the probability that this would have turned out very badly would have been much higher.'' Mr Rubin announced in May that he would leave the administration around 4July. The deputy secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers, a 44-year-old former economics professor from Harvard, has been picked by Mr Clinton to replace Mr Rubin. Mr Summers' nomination is pending before the full Senate. Mr Rubin refused to speculate whether he would remain past the weekend should Mr Summers not be confirmed by then. A possibility is that Mr Summers, the department's second-highest official, will serve on an acting basis, pending approval. Mr Rubin worked for 26 years at Goldman Sachs, rising to the post of co-chairman when Mr Clinton tapped him in 1993 to take the job as director of the National Economic Council, the White House group Mr Clinton created to coordinate his administration's economic policies. Mr Rubin took the lead in pushing Mr Clinton towards a greater emphasis on deficit reductions, a policy that produced the first budget surplus in 29 years last year. Mr Rubin's policies helped keep the US economy expanding for what is now a peacetime record of more than eight years without a downturn. Beyond talking about a holiday to his favorite trout streams, Mr Rubin was vague about his plans. He ruled out running for elective office, but suggested he was ready to help the President's wife, Hillary Clinton, if she runs for a Senate seat from New York. He also did not rule out returning to Washington, but he sidestepped questions about whether his return might be as successor to the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, whose term ends next year. AP theage.com.au