Quote of the Day (Robert Rubin, on ‘Outsiders Arriving in Washington’)

“I…recommend that outsiders arriving in Washington recognize how much they don't know about government and how different it can be from business. The best way to make a successful transition to the public sector is to do so with humility. The alternative, in many cases, is to have humility thrust upon you."—Former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs co-senior partner Robert Rubin, “The Limits of ‘Running Government Like a Business,'” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18-19, 2025

You can put down at least one person from the private sector who failed to heed Rubin’s warning at the start of the second Trump administration: Elon Musk. 

The Tesla tycoon, having rode roughshod through the executive branch in his unelected, unconfirmed role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a “department” never authorized by Congress, by the way—now finds himself sidelined by the President he backed with all of his financial and social-media power, according to this post on the “Square” blog of the Binance Website.

Worse still, he is telling worried Tesla investors that he’s scaling back his involvement in DOGE to a day or two a week starting sometime in May. And not a moment too soon: his indiscriminate cost-cutting in service to Trump has caused such a backlash that the company’s revenue fell 9%, with auto revenue down 20%, and adjusted income plummeted 39%--increases steeper than forecast, according to Chris Isidore’s report for CNN. And profits have dropped a whopping 71% over the first three months of the year.

With any luck, the damage to Musk’s financial position will be permanent. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely after all this time that Musk, any more than the President he supported so recklessly, has learned the “humility” that Rubin urged.

More tragically, Musk’s barbaric assault on institutions built over a century will result, in one way or another, damage to Americans in virtually every corner of their lives, from Social Security to veterans’ affair.

(The accompanying image of Robert Rubin was taken May 11, 2014, by Ralph Alswang.)