Yellow Pad

Robert E. Rubin spent more than fifty years in finance, business, government and politics. He rose to co-chair Goldman Sachs and later served as United States Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton. Drawing on that long career, he offers a practical way of approaching decisions in a world where nothing can be known for certain.

The idea behind his thinking took hold in 1957, when he enrolled as a college sophomore in an introductory philosophy course taught by Raphael Demos. The course was nominally about philosophy, but Demos was really pushing his students to examine how they reasoned. Rubin left the class convinced that certainty is out of reach and that anyone who hopes to succeed has to learn to make choices while accepting that fact.

Rubin asks what that principle requires at a moment when leaders in government and business face several crises that feed into one another: deepening political upheaval, an escalating climate emergency, and the possibility of another worldwide pandemic. How should a person decide well when the stakes are this high? The book lays out the methods and procedures he relied on in critical moments, illustrated with episodes from Washington and Wall Street. It combines qualitative and quantitative tools for untangling complicated economic and social questions and presents them as a framework that applies to sweeping public problems as well as to the everyday dilemmas of private life.

Throughout, Rubin addresses readers across generations and across the political divide, taking up some of the most contested and emotionally charged issues of the day. He sets out realistic policy proposals meant to move society forward while making sure that no group is left out.