under Bill Clinton. According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rubin(snip)
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Of note, the supermerger between Travelers Group and Citicorp was facilitated by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act). This legislation was passed under the Clinton administration, days before Rubin's resignation. Consolidation of investment, commercial banking, and insurance services as practiced by Citigroup under the direction of Rubin has been implicated in the subprime mortage crisis.
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It gets better.
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Critics credit Rubin with helping create the conditions for the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, as a result of the policies he pursued as Treasury Secretary. Together with then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives, when such regulation was proposed by then-head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Brooksley Born. Overexposure to credit derivatives of mortgage-backed securities—and credit default swaps (Insurance on securities)(CDS)—was a key reason for the failure of US financial institutions Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, and Washington Mutual in 2008.
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Warren Buffett later called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction", and the lack of regulation of derivatives played a key role in the 2008 financial crisis.
Other competent critics of Rubin's philosophy and policies include Kevin Phillips.
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If it weren't for corporations like Citigroup, we would not be in economic meltdown. Now they demand that the U.S. taxpayers bail them out. The ultimate chutzpah.