Time Magazine Celebrates "Committee to Save the World" While They Block Derivatives Regulation

Time Magazine publishes its February 15, 1999 edition featuring Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Secretary Lawrence Summers, and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on the cover as “The Committee to Save the World,” celebrating their management of the 1997-1998 Asian and Russian financial crises. The triumphalist coverage portrays the three officials as financial saviors while completely ignoring their simultaneous campaign to block derivatives regulation and dismantle financial safeguards.

The same trio being celebrated had spent 1998 orchestrating the suppression of CFTC Chair Brooksley Born’s warnings about unregulated derivatives markets. In November 1998, just months before the Time cover, they had issued a joint report recommending that derivatives be explicitly exempted from regulation - the exact policy that would enable the 2008 financial crisis. The Time cover treatment represented a classic case of elite media legitimizing regulatory capture while it was actively occurring.

The “Committee to Save the World” narrative obscured how Rubin, Summers, and Greenspan were systematically dismantling financial regulation on behalf of Wall Street. Within nine months of the cover story, Rubin would leave Treasury to join Citigroup (beneficiary of Glass-Steagall repeal), Summers would replace him and continue blocking derivatives oversight, and Greenspan would maintain the Federal Reserve’s refusal to regulate shadow banking. The celebratory media coverage provided political cover for deregulation policies that would lead directly to systemic financial collapse within a decade.