That was before federal budget battles, the Asian financial crisis, the Mexico rescue, and the roaring ’90s economy turned Rubin into one of the most widely recognized U.S. Treasury secretaries ever, adorning the covers of newsweeklies and briefly (if implausibly) rumored to be a possible vice presidential candidate for Al Gore. Now, a decade after his arrival in Washington, a more politically seasoned and somewhat less cautious Rubin has written, with the help of Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, a memoir of his days on Wall Street and his six and a half years in the Clinton administration.
In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington is no kiss-and-tell memoir, though it does have a few moments of humor and genuine tension. The philosophic core of the book is not profound, composed of Rubin’s “fundamental view that nothing in life is certain and that, consequently, all decisions are about probabilities.
