When it does, it will have an inflationary impact on the U.S. economy and may lead the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates, possibly throwing the economy into a recession. In this sense, Rubin's policy can be seen as a way to purchase short-term prosperity that will leave large problems for others to address. It is also worth noting that Rubin's management of the international economy has not been very successful from the standpoint of the populations of the nations whose economies he attempted to direct. While the financial markets in nations such as Mexico, Korea and Thailand have largely recovered from the impact of their financial crises, the populations of these nations have not. In Korea, for example, the unemployment rate is nearly four times its pre-crisis level.
Real wages remain far below their pre-crisis level in Mexico.
Rubin also failed to foresee any of the world's major financial crises during his tenure, as he encouraged a process of liberalized capital flows that created the preconditions for these crises. The latter point is noted briefly in the Broder and Sanger article. It is also worth noting that Rubin worked aggressively to head off a Japanese effort to establish an East Asian bailout fund. Many economists now believe that the countries of the region and Japan would have fared much better if Japan had been allowed to go ahead with its plans. These articles discuss the career of Larry Summers, the person nominated to succeed Robert Rubin as Treasury Secretary.