In the last seven days, the deluge of new Wall Street scandals has been constant, fascinating and incredibly confusing. Helpfully, one tie that binds is that nearly every major accusation has been accompanied by denials from the accused, but beyond that things can get confusing. What's the difference between the mortgage deal named Aquarius and the one called Abacus? Did Moody's and other credit rating agencies fool the public, or were they fooled? Was Lehman the only bank that used a book-cooker like Repo 105? What, again, was Chooch? Here is a brief and alphabetized guide to recent scandals.

Abacus: Abacus 2007-AC was one of the dozens of deals that Goldman is said to have built so that the bank and certain clients, in this case John Paulson, could bet heavily against the soon-to-tank housing market. Without it, we wouldn't have had fabulous Fabrice, an S.E.C. case and a lot of Senatorial fun.

Chooch: This charming film about ne’er-do-wells from Queens who have a fun-filled adventure in Mexico was in the news again this April, when the giant private-equity firm Quadrangle settled pay-to-play charges, and denounced co-founder Steve Rattner. Why? The low-budget 2003 comedy was produced by the New York state pension fund chief investment officer’s brother. Back when Mr. Rattner was still running Quadrangle, the billionaire was said to have gotten in touch with an entertainment company controlled by his firm to arrange for Chooch to be distributed. Afterwards, the state pension fund invested $100 million with Quadrangle. "Mr. Rattner does not agree," a spokesperson said after the denouncement, "with the characterization of events released today."

Cohen vs. Cohen: Steven A. Cohen is one of the most powerful hedge fund managers in the world; Patricia Cohen is the women he divorced more than 20 years ago. Late last year, she filed a lawsuit under the racketeer act asking for $300 million, accusing him of fraud and insider trading. She was sued in April by her own lawyer.

Dead Presidents: Morgan Stanley was said this week to have misled its investors about mortgage deals known around the firm as "Dead Presidents," because they were named after the likes of James "doughface" Buchanan and Andrew Jackson. The deals reportedly had built-in features that "made it more likely" for investors to lose money when mortgage bonds were souring. 

The Dow Crash: Why did the Dow have the biggest intraday fall in its history on May 6? No one seems to know, although they do like gossiping about fat fingers and Citi screw-ups.

Galleon: It was already astounding news when the billionaire hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam was arrested in October, accused of running the biggest insider trading scheme in the industry’s history. By the end of the year, the investigation of his firm, Galleon, had only gotten bigger, and in April it sucked in Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, who soon stepped down. He declined to seek board reelection because of other commitments, he said at the time.

Magnetar: Just before ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize this year, it released a 5,900-word exposé on this cosmically named hedge fund. Magnetar created and bet against mortgage deals that wiped out about $40 billion when they eventually became worthless: ACA Aquarius, Vertical Virgo, Sagittarius and Draco are some of their fun names. The article explained how the firm helped perpetuate the subprime mortgage market by creating investments to bet against.

Mistaken Moody’s: There was news this week that Andrew Cuomo is looking into whether Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Merrill Lynch and four other banks misled credit rating agencies. So were Moody's, Fitch and S&P simply duped into giving banks' deals inflated ratings? Not quite. For one, those agencies posted their models so that bankers could "reverse engineer" to get desired ratings, a source told the Times. Meanwhile, Moody's was already in a heap of trouble, thanks to a notice from the S.E.C. As for S&P: "Did the company make mistakes? I’ve never used the word 'mistake,'" a spokesperson said recently.

New Madoffs: There is only one Bernie, but Ponzi schemers continue to make news. Minnesota’s Tom Petters was recently sentenced to 50 years in prison for his $3.65 billion plot (the second-largest in American history); Scott Rothstein pleaded guilty to his $1.2 billion scheme; and Miami’s Nevin Shaprio was charged soon after.

The Orca: After the horribly violent death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in February, activists criticized the private-equity giant Blackstone, who had bought SeaWorld and other theme parks for $2.3 billion. The firm, however, was contrite. There's a metaphor about private equity in here, somewhere.

Repo 105: The Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy examiner's report broke news of Repo 105, a spectacular accounting trick the investment bank used to fluff up the look of its balance sheet as it hurtled toward death in September 2008. "When I read this, I giggle a little bit," a former executive said at the time. Have other banks used 105-style tricks? Bank of America may have—and about 17 others. "Efforts to manage the size of our balance sheet are routine and appropriate," a Bank of America spokesperson said in March, and again in April.

The Rubin Cuddle: "And not long afterward the former Treasury Secretary had his tongue down my throat and hands everywhere, sort of like an octopus."

It’s not clear what Mr. Paulson was angling for when he decided to publish a 477-page autobiography. If he wanted to burnish a legacy, to get himself removed from the list of the crisis’ great villains (he’s No. 6 on Time’s), it didn’t work. The phrase “we had little choice” is actually the best he can come up with to justify the bailouts.

And he couldn’t have wanted to simply provide a good inside look at his life and times, because On the Brink is a portrait of the bureaucrat as a nauseous and drowsy man. He solemnly describes how he dry-heaved in front of an American flag, in a bathroom stall and in front of Senator Judd Gregg. Other hour-by-hour details (especially a chronicle of his work-related sleeplessness) would be autobiographical triumphs if they didn’t contrast so grimly with the book’s void of thoughtful analysis. With the exception of a short and intensely dry afterword, it lacks any dissection of the intricacies of the crisis, its causes or its aftermath.

What’s much worse is the sense he gives that there wasn’t much fussing over detail as the crisis unfolded, either. He and his colleagues flew by the seat of their pants, Mr. Paulson concedes, “making it up as we went along.” He says he realized on Sept. 12, 2008, that AIG was “one more institution to put on our watch.” The government spent $85 billion to bail it out on Sept. 16.

His memoir is like Tolstoy. It gives the spectacularly unsettling sense that world history is decided by an assortment of guys who are improvising, and may not be particularly good at it. Only, unlike in Tolstoy, there’s a lot of nausea.

THE GOOD NEWS HERE is that Mr. Paulson is not shy about his personal eccentricities. He concedes a fondness for locking himself “in the bathroom with Sports Illustrated to relax in quiet.” He used to speed through his children’s bedtime stories because of his work schedule; one night, his wife, who likes to call him Pea, forced him to read with expression. “No, no!” the kids objected. “Read like a daddy, not a mommy.”

During his own childhood, he bailed hay, turned butter, fostered pet raccoons and took Canadian canoe trips “with difficult portages.” Dad used to cut his hair: “He did such a bad job that he left bare patches on our scalps, then he filled in the bald spots with pencil and said no one would notice.” He didn’t mind, though it traumatized his little brother, whose fragility ensured he’d become a mere Lehman Brothers bond salesman and not a Goldman Sachs CEO or Treasury secretary.

After leaving one job for the other in 2006, Mr. Paulson says his “number one concern was the likelihood of a financial crisis,” and that he told George Bush, in a wood-paneled Camp David conference room, all about credit default swaps, systemic risk and the growth of unregulated hedge funds. If that’s true, it’s Wall Street’s version of the “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” presidential brief.

Then again, Mr. Paulson doesn’t explain why his first sleepless night didn’t come until Bear Stearns began to collapse two years later. Instead, he offers that he could kick himself for saying in an April 2007 speech that the subprime problem was “largely contained,” then points out that plenty of other people were wrong, too.

But he should have known better. At a dinner with top bankers at the Fed a few months later, as he tells it, the most powerful chief executives on Wall Street were mournful addicts begging to be forced to quit their opiates. “Isn’t there something you can do to order us not take all of these risks?” Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince asked; Blackstone’s chief, Stephen Schwarzman, said he couldn’t resist taking easy money. What does it mean that these kingpins knew what they were doing and were begging to be stopped? Mr. Paulson won’t say.

About the problem of rococo Wall Street greed, he admits that he “pushed back hard” against TARP’s pay restrictions, adds that he “was as appalled as anyone at Wall Street’s pay practices” and then jogs away from the mess. Eventually, he shuffles back to describe a conversation with a Democratic senator—“once again my ear was being chewed off about compensation.” He doesn’t mention that he sold half a billion dollars’ worth of Goldman stock when he came to the Treasury, reportedly saving more than $100 million in taxes thanks to new I.R.S. rules about federal service.

Except for whiffs of his ire for politicians (Nancy Pelosi makes him pour his Diet Coke into a glass), the book flatters widely and passionately. The Watergate villain John Ehrlichman, a boss during Mr. Paulson’s early days at Nixon’s Domestic Council, is “dedicated”; Bob Rubin “put the public interest ahead”; the Chinese are old friends of his; AIG’s Bob Willumstad is “an incredible gentleman”; and Lehman’s Dick Fuld is “direct and personable.” Never mind that Mr. Paulson reportedly considered the latter to be a thuggish glutton.

What’s much worse is that the book makes the circumstances of Lehman’s fall even more convoluted. Mr. Paulson says that he and Tim Geithner, despite their public stance against more bailouts, agreed just a few days before the bankruptcy that “a Lehman failure would be more expensive for the taxpayers.” He writes that he would have helped the firm by supporting a takeover, as he did with Bear Stearns, but that the government’s “hands were tied” because no suitors wanted Lehman. That makes no sense: Bank of America and Barclay’s were both interested, and both shrank away when the government said it couldn’t help.

AS TARP WAS BEING DEVELOPED, his own chief of staff and a White House deputy both took Mr. Paulson aside to complain he was moving too fast. The steps needed to be analyzed more carefully, and they felt his approach discouraged dissent. “I told them that if I had waffled one bit,” he writes, “we wouldn’t have a program to debate.”

Last weekend, two days before the release of the book, TARP’s inspector general released a report to Congress outlining the program’s neon-colored shortcomings: “It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.” Most of TARP’s goals have simply not been met: Home foreclosures remain at record levels, unemployment is the highest it has been in decades and lending to American businesses and consumers continues to fall.

As far as that last point goes, the only thing he says on the matter is, “I didn’t think I could tell the banks how much to lend or to whom.” That’s because his message, which he can’t help but eventually make explicit, is, “I make no apology.”

Bear Stearns was rescued but Lehman wasn’t. Citigroup was going to buy Wachovia until Wells Fargo swooped instead. Cancerous Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were given clean bills of health by their regulator just before nationalization. AIG was given a gruesome amount of money that will almost never be returned. And that’s just the way it is, On the Brink says.

Not only did Mr. Paulson “not have time for regret, recriminations, or second-guessing,” but he doesn’t use the newfound power of hindsight. He even calls it a pandering “political approach” to criticize the rating agencies, which were essentially paid to say all was well with a diseased system.

Surely he has more sophisticated and subtle insights into the ugliness of American finance, but he keeps them to himself. “I don’t mean to minimize our troubles,” the book’s finale declares, “but every major country has more-significant problems.”

mabelson@observer.com

ballroom stage looking at his watch. His gray suit stretched to accommodate his

paunch, his tie shined a bright power red. Before him sat a rapt audience of

shareholders-patient, expectant, ready. It was just past 9 a.m. on April 17,

and Mr. Weill was ready to call to order his first shareholders' meeting as

sole chairman and chief executive of Citigroup.

"As soon as we find our board, we will start," he said to

some colleagues. "Anyone seen them?" Almost as if on cue, a side door by the

stage opened. Fourteen dark-suited men and one woman filed quietly into the

ballroom and filled up the first two rows of red mohair seats.

"I was beginning to think you guys mutinied," he said, sotto

voce, to his directors as they settled into their seats. Then he laughed, his

face flushed with pleasure. Mr. Weill reached for the microphone. His

opera-singer chest seemed to expand. "I apologize for being late," he said to

the packed hall. "But as you can see, my board is truly independent. They

thought the meeting started at 9:05."

The audience laughed.

Mr. Weill then introduced his starting line-up.

"Mike Armstrong, Ken Bialkin, Ken Derr, John Deutch, Ann

Jordan, Bob Lipp," he said, "Reuben Mark, Mike Masin, Dudley Mecum, Richard

Parsons, Andy Pearson, Bob Rubin"-at this there were cheers and a few hoots

from the gallery, and he went on booming into the microphone-"Frank Thomas and

Art Zankel." Each director, save Mr. Rubin, who was used to the exposure,

offered a weak hand-wave. Then Mr. Weill introduced "our honorary director,

President Gerald Ford," and the wizened 87-year-old ex-President turned to face

the applause and waved.

Sandy Weill had presented his all-star team. It is a team

that, by almost any accounting, is the most powerful board in the city. For the

first time in his career, Mr. Weill has a monster balance sheet, a monster

brand and a monster board to feed his still restless ambitions. And what does

such a board give Mr. Weill? It makes him a true insider. It's one thing to be

a takeover king; it's another to preside over such a board. To hobnob with Bob

Rubin, to hop on the jet with Mike Armstrong, to ponder China with ex-C.I.A.

head John Deutch-this is the real stuff. While Wall Street's top executives

still worry, sweat and scheme, Mr. Weill seems finished with the dirty work.

It's his moment to achieve something beyond raw power, which is buyable, to

affect some of Mr. Rubin's effortless boardroom cool. Mr. Weill is now defined

by the very classy board that surrounds him, a board that shows he has come

further than the Icahns, the Perelmans, the Steinbergs-all the others who have

tried to buy their way into the inner circle. To have a board like his is the

real gauge of power in New York. When you've got it, flaunt it.

It is a unique conglomeration: nine Travelers holdovers, six

members of the former Citicorp board and Mr. Rubin-heavyweights one and all.

And when you compare his board to other Wall Street boards-there is no comparison. Morgan Stanley,

Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase or Bear Stearns-the Street's biggest power

brokers are choosing boards that are meek, packed with company insiders you've

never heard of. Surviving at the top of a Wall Street firm is no walk in the

park these days. Ask Goldman Sachs' Jon Corzine, Morgan Stanley's John Mack and

even Mr. Reed. It's much easier to pack your board with go-to guys who will

stick it out with you in the boardroom foxhole.

So, at the Bear Stearns shareholders' meeting a month ago,

chairman Ace Greenberg didn't give a big introduction to 74-year-old director

Carl Glickman ( who's he? -private investor),

or to William Mack (founder and managing partner of the Apollo Real Estate

Funds). Star power?  Four of the 11

directors are Bear Stearns executives.

At Morgan Stanley's recent shareholders meeting, chairman

and chief executive Phil Purcell talked a lot about the choppy markets, but

aside from his president, Bob Scott, his board was not even there, and the

missing were mostly relatively obscure retired C.E.O.'s anyhow, with

long-standing ties to Mr. Purcell.

But the Citigroup board-well, that's a different story:

rainmakers, luminaries and corporate chieftains, plus a couple of well-placed

cronies. And in this season of market anxiety, the power that 50- and

60-year-old men in suits wield, particularly when placed behind burnished oak

tables, may be just what the doctor ordered.

The Wise Men are back. Wasn't that the message on April 18

when the king of all boardrooms, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, snapped the

markets out of their slumber with a surprise .50-basis-point rate cut?  It was the ultimate boardroom act:

super-secretive, incisively aimed, dramatic-Greatest Generation

sleight-of-hand, safely back where it had long resided, in wood-paneled closed

boardrooms.

In that respect, there was something reassuring about Sandy

Weill's board. And not just to Sandy Weill, but to the spectator. As theater it

was wonderful, and think about what it did for Mr. Weill.

The board itself is the result of the 1998

Travelers-Citicorp merger. It was made up of 19 members, eight each from

Travelers and Citicorp, plus Mr. Reed, Mr. Weill and President Ford, the

honorary member. Three years later, Mr. Reed has gone, and so have two others,

leaving the current 17, with the addition of Mr. Rubin. It is a board that

reflects the wild and varied history of Mr. Weill's career: Shearson Loeb

Rhoades, Commercial Credit, Primerica, Travelers and, of course, Citicorp-just

about all the stops along Mr. Weill's magical Wall Street tour.

And it truly is his board. That was made clear last March

when, in an all-day session called by the directors for the inevitable showdown

between Citigroup's incompatible co-chairmen, the board chose the 68-year-old

Mr. Weill over the 61-year-old Mr. Reed, after having heard presentations from

both. No one was surprised. Just as no one ever expected Mr. Weill to live

forever in harmony with American Express chief executive Jim Robinson following

AmEx's 1980 takeover of Mr. Weill's Shearson Loeb Rhoades, no one really

believed the cheery corporate spin of Sandy and John, co-chairs and C.E.O.'s,

having a blast together in the executive suite.

Having been forced out by Mr. Robinson in 1985 taught Mr.

Weill a lesson. Early on after the merger, he made his move against the cold,

removed and technocratic Mr. Reed, putting his people in place and selling himself

and his vision to the six Citicorp directors on the Citigroup board. That left

Mr. Reed with no real base on his own board and the directors a natural choice:

Mr. Weill.

Sandy's Guys

Suddenly, Mr. Weill's directors had morphed from a select

group of his friends with a small sprinkling of stars to a weighty cluster of

power brokers. Indeed, from 1964 through 1980, when he was bought out by

American Express, his boards have grown and evolved through all the

acquisitions-more than 15-in which Mr. Weill has engaged.

Which is not to say that his boards automatically signed off

on everything he did. "For Sandy, his board was not just a rubber stamp," said

Peter Cohen, former Shearson C.E.O. and a member of Weill boards in the 1970's

and 1980's. "When there was to be a board action, he would make his case, but

there would always be a thorough, healthy discussion."

At the Citigroup board's core are Arthur Zankel, Dudley

Mecum, Andrall Pearson, Kenneth Bialkin and President Ford, true-blue Sandy

Weill supporters, all of whom signed up with him in October 1986 when Mr.

Weill-emerging from his post-AmEx purdah -took over as chairman and chief

executive of Commercial Credit Company, a down-market consumer-finance concern

based in Baltimore. Going back even further are Mr. Bialkin and President Ford.

Mr. Bialkin, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and long

recognized as one of the top M.&A. lawyers on the Street, had been

arranging Mr. Weill's deals since the 1960's-including two of the biggest, the

1979 sale of Shearson to American Express and Commercial Credit's 1988

acquisition of Primerica.

President Ford became the first celebrity member of a Sandy

Weill board in 1980, when he joined up with Shearson Loeb Rhoades.

As for Mr. Zankel and Mr. Mecum, call them "Pals of

Sandy"-every chairman needs a few. Mr. Zankel, 69, is a small-bore private

investor who, together with Mr. Weill, has been a big donor to Carnegie Hall. A

wing is named after him there, and he serves as vice chairman. (Mr. Weill

serves as chairman.) Mr. Mecum, 66, is a managing director at Capricorn

Holdings, a small L.B.O. firm based in Greenwich, Conn.

Also very close to Mr. Weill is Robert Lipp, who has been a

key No. 2 executive since the Commercial Credit days. He now chairs the board

of Travelers Property Casualty Corp.

As Commercial Credit grew, evolved and prospered, Mr. Weill

added names to the Weill establishment ranks. In 1989, Ann Biddle Jordan, the

well-connected wife of Clinton buddy Vernon, was appointed to what, by then,

had become a Primerica board. In 1993, AT&T's Mr. Armstrong joined; he was

then chairman and chief executive of Hughes Electronic Corporation.

In 1997 Michael Masin, vice chairman and president of

Verizon, became a member of what had become the Travelers board. In April 1998,

Travelers merged with Citicorp, and John Reed and Mr. Weill agreed to combine

their respective boards. So from Citicorp came a group of corporate insiders

hand-picked by Mr. Reed: Alain Belda, chairman and chief executive of Alcoa,

successor to Treasury chief Paul O'Neill; retired Chevron chief executive and

chairman Kenneth Derr; former C.I.A. director John Deutch; and Reuben Mark,

chairman and chief executive of Colgate Palmolive. For media glitz, there was

Richard Parsons, co-chief operating officer for AOL Time Warner. For classy

not-for-profit clout: Franklin Thomas, Ford Foundation head from 1979 to 1996.

Then the personification of prosperity showed up in October 1999, when Mr.

Rubin succumbed to Mr. Weill's advances and signed up as a member of the office

of the chairman and a director as well.

So Mr. Weill has the best of both worlds: a core group of

longtime friends and Citicorp members, giving the board the feel and look of

being truly independent. That being said, Mr. Weill now truly seems to be

calling the shots.

Since Mr. Reed's departure, the issue of who will succeed

Mr. Weill-now 68-has been much discussed. Supposedly, Mr. Weill and the board

are to come up with a plan by 2002. But at the shareholders meeting, when he

was asked about progress on that front, Mr. Weill was opaque: "We have a

dialogue between myself and the board of directors, the compensation committee

of the board, about succession. I think the board knows my thoughts, and I

think the board is actively engaged in thinking about what is the most

appropriate thing to do in this process and how we do it in the most seamless

way." To paraphrase, but not very much: The board is thinking, but not doing.

Not that the shareholders seem to care much. Yes, there were

speeches from activists holding Mr. Weill and Citigroup responsible for

everything from predatory lending in low-income neighborhoods to

money-laundering in Russia to the destruction of the rain forests to the Asian

financial crisis. But the fans still had the final say.

"Are there any more questions?" Mr. Weill asked the crowd. A

middle-aged woman, dressed all in red, stepped up to the microphone.

"I just want to thank you, Mr. Weill," she said, "for being

the best possible C.E.O. that a company could have." Her quavering voice rang

through the hall. "Only a great leader chooses greatness. You have been able to

get Mr. Rubin for your board and to have President Ford … what else can I say?

What an honor."

The crowd applauded; there was a big, broad grin from Mr.

Weill, and the meeting was over. The directors stood. President Ford and Mr.

Rubin signed some

autographs, while the rest filed to the long line of dark cars outside Carnegie

Hall, murmuring and laughing along the way.

"Hey, Ken," Mr. Weill called out to former Chevron chief

executive Mr. Derr. "What about those pipelines?" He was referring to a

shareholder's long harangue about Citigroup's supposed financing of pipelines

in Burma. Mr. Derr smiled and shook his head. The stratosphere smelled sweet.

The directors' business done, they had drifted away. But

Sandy Weill dove into the crowd, grasping hands here, posing for snapshots

there, before finally-and very reluctantly-exiting stage left.

A reader of this column, a money manager to whose wit and perspicuity I would entrust my funds, if the equitable distribution provisions of the Divorce Code of the State of New York had left me any, quite properly draws enraged attention to the spectacle, almost dazzling in its impropriety, of the chairman of the Federal Reserve attempting to talk out of existence all the money he has pumped into the stock market this decade. Mr. Greenspan reminds me of a child who believes he can undo whatever damage he has wrought simply by saying, "I'm sorry." I have explained to Francis that this is not generally the case; I suspect I would have more difficulty convincing Mr. Greenspan.

A couple of numbers back, Business Week ran a commentary by Rich Miller headed "The Fed's Dangerous Liaison With Wall Street." The piece quoted a currency specialist: "The Fed is too wrapped up in what the markets think. It's as if they're making policy on the basis of CNBC broadcasts." I think this is true; I also think it was entirely predictable. When I first saw Mr. Greenspan plain, some 20-odd years ago at a lunch at the Gilder Lehrman Institute, I said to myself, "Hullo, here's a fellow ready to lick a boot or two." The intervening years have given me small reason to change my mind. What remains to be seen is whether the footwear that gleams with the chairman's saliva will cease to caper gaily up the High Street and tramp sullenly down our fiscal backbone.

Not that I can talk the boom of the 10 past years out of existence. And who would want to? But I do think some perspective remains in order. Our nonstatist, decentralized economy pulled itself out of the slump of 1991-2; the lodestone-centralized economies–Japan and Germany–that might have provided competition for world resources, and thereby put a different face on American prosperity in the 90's, did not. Germany continues to pay the heavy cost of reunification, the cost of which may not be amortized for another decade or so, and Japan's banking system is still not out of the woods.

We enjoyed the position, unique (I believe) in world history, of furnishing essentially all the demand in the global economy. We have been able to buy at "our price," thanks to the persistence of the slump elsewhere, which among other things held down the cost of overseas manufacturing labor, which held down the cost of U.S. manufacturing labor. A similar linkage has obtained in agriculture, on the price side. And–to complete this unprecedented trifecta of comparative advantage–we could pay for the stuff with markers: greenbacks and T-bills no longer held to a fixed standard of exchange.

Nothing–even other nations' bad luck or bad sense–goes on forever, however. A sense of equity urges that it would be nice if other nations could afford some of the stuff they are currently producing essentially for our gratification. This will come to pass, and when it does, we had better be ready for the effects of a poison more toxic to our global situation than inflationary-deflationary competition, than any exchange rate or overseas demand. Namely, what I sense to be, from what I hear and read from overseas, a hatred of this country more widespread and bone-deep than we can imagine. They hate us for our moral arrogance, and they hate us for our economic good fortune, and they hate us because we aren't them. It doesn't matter whether we deserve this antipathy. Among nations, motives matter only to historians.

We can try to convince ourselves that we are so rich that the good will of others really doesn't matter, but I am at pains to see how we can square this with the nationally held assumption that the key to our future lies in the continued exploitation of a truly "global" economy. In the old days, when the United States played the role of world sheriff, it didn't really matter if the folks we were protecting thought us a sonofabitch. But at a time when we are running unprecedented trade deficits and flooding the world with chips that may someday have to be cashed, I suspect it does. This is why I think we should have passed a test-ban treaty of some kind. It is why debt relief is essential: to lift from the backs of Bengalis and Jamaicans the burden laid upon them long decades ago by the unholy league of OPEC and Walter Wriston in the name of "petrodollar recycling." Around the world, the International Monetary Fund is the enemy, and around the world–I suspect, if you ask most people–the I.M.F. is thought to be us.

The decisions made by supposedly really smart people often give us mortals a sense of what's what, how things may go. Take Robert Rubin. Everybody's been waiting to see which way he would jump. It reminded me of that old story, apposite in view of the Yankees' splendid World Series victory, about the time Lefty Gomez was pitching with one out and runners at the corners. The batter tapped back to Gomez, whose play was either to the plate or to second to start a double play. Instead, he wheeled and fired the ball to second baseman Tony Lazzeri, who–with a left-handed hitter up–was minding his own business in the hole between first and second. Everyone was safe; a run scored. Lazzeri came huffing up to Gomez.

"What the hell was that about?" he demanded.

"Oh," said Gomez, smiling, "we always hear how you're the smartest player in the game, so I just wanted to see what you'd do."

Mr. Rubin's supposedly the smartest guy in the high-finance game, and so we all have been speculating where he'd end up. Most of us saw him going for the big money, the kind of bucks he would have taken out of the Goldman Sachs public offering if he hadn't gone to Washington. Working with Ted Forstmann, for example, where Clinton major-domo Erskine Bowles is a partner. So everyone I've talked to, including the guy in my mirror, has been bowled over by Mr. Rubin's decision to join Citigroup Inc.

Bowled over, fascinated, mystified. I can't think of a more inappropriate move in the big time since Punch Sulzberger agreed to become chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and put himself in the position of soliciting funds and art from people The New York Times might well have found it worthwhile to look into. I'm not saying this had anything to do with the Gray Lady's essentially chickenshit financial reporting during Mr. Sulzberger's tenure at the Met, but I'm also not saying it didn't. Many of us still think the Met was charging too little for trusteeships during that period, and if $10 million also bought silence from 43rd Street, it was really a good deal. Of course if whoever is our next President appoints Bill Clinton head of the Federal Communications Commission, all bets are off!

So much for all the blather about how Bob Rubin wants to keep out of the public eye. A higher-visibility Wall Street job, there just isn't. And on another level, Mr. Rubin's choice puts paid to the popularly held conviction that this is one of the really super-ethical paragons of our time. On Oct. 28, the New York Post ran an editorial, "Robert Rubin's Ethical Dilemma," which pointed out that even as the former Treasury Secretary must have been mulling the Citigroup offer, he was lobbying Congress for financial-services reform, namely the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, in which his prospective employer has more than a passing interest.

Near term, it will be kind of fun to watch: a sort of Cavalleria Rusticana in pinstripes, in which one of the master operators of our time will join up with Sandy Weill in Act I to send John Reed packing, with an Act II finale featuring Mr. Weill's dying declaration of " Et tu, Bob? " More importantly, what does Mr. Rubin's decision tell us about his view of the future?

He has chosen corporatism as opposed to entrepreneurialism. Maybe it's simply because he's used to big staff, big footings, etc. But maybe he senses the end of an era. We'll just have to see. Somehow, I can't help feeling, more as a matter of experience and instinct than rationale, that Mr. Rubin's jump to Citigroup ties in with the utterances of another dog that's still barking in the night, but in what suddenly seem muted tones: I refer to Jeff Bezos' thudding announcement of Amazon.com Inc.'s third-quarter earnings. I love his business, I'm a loyal and regular customer, but I wouldn't want to have a nickel in it at this point.

But then again, I don't have a nickel–which means readers should take these reflections with a grain of silver.

He's not the only one wondering. Everyone wants to know what Mr. Rubin is going to do next. He is New York's most eligible potential executive, a headhunter's dream, an idle power broker with a trader's mind and a Cabinet member's connections. Best of all, he has enough money already (an estimated $100 million) to keep him from having to be a glutton, unlike a long list of former Cabinet members who have dropped back into the private sector with their well-greased palms already upturned.

Ever since Mr. Rubin returned to the city after resigning from the Treasury in July and taking an Alaskan salmon fishing trip, he has been popping up around town. He causes a stir, in a way that few of his predecessors at the Treasury ever would have. He's a handsome guy. Women seem to respond to him the way they must have responded to Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury Secretary to whom he is often compared. "I saw him the other day at 11 Madison Park," said a woman who works at a major investment bank. "He looked tan, rested. And his charisma in person was palpable. He was on his cell phone. I think he was chewing gum. There was a twinkle in his eye. The people I mentioned it to were all very impressed. Women especially. Women find him very attractive."

But the real parlor game is trying to guess his next gig. He seems to pop up as a candidate for every major position that may be vacant some day, from governor of New York to president of the World Bank to head of the soon-to-be-merged New York Yankees and New Jersey Nets.

Mr. Rubin declined to discuss his employment prospects. "I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do," he told The Observer . But he has indicated that he wants to return to Wall Street, and this is where the parlor game gets serious.

Mr. Rubin could probably work anywhere he wants. Before he joined the Clinton administration in 1993, he was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs & Company, perhaps Wall Street's most illustrious investment bank. Before that, he was the firm's star arbitrageur. He went to Harvard, Yale and the London School of Economics. He is brilliant, patient and-you won't find much of this on Wall Street-legendarily self-effacing.

So, of course, Mr. Rubin is being courted by nearly every major Wall Street firm, and (so the chatter goes) by a long list of major corporations like Microsoft and IBM, who would love Mr. Rubin to serve on their boards. "The recruitment of Bob Rubin reminds me of pro teams going after the Heisman Trophy winner," said his friend Robert Hormats, a Goldman vice chairman.

"Everybody in my industry would be at least interested in sitting down with him," said Paul Beirne, a principal at Sanford Bernstein & Company and a big fund-raiser for the Democratic Party. "If you hear that he's interested in the money management field, we'd like to talk to him."

Others feel similarly about Mr. Rubin's prospects, but are a bit less effusive. "I have absolutely no comment," snapped Alan (Ace) Greenberg, chairman of Bear Stearns Companies. "I'm sure he'll do just fine."

Mr. Rubin doesn't seem to be in a great rush to make up his mind. He rose through the ranks at Goldman as a trader. Traders fall into two camps: the plungers who rely on their gut instincts, and the scholarly types like Mr. Rubin who take a more studious approach. He once told The Washington Post that he listed each trade's upsides and downsides on a "mental yellow pad" before pulling the trigger. So people who know him say he spends his time these days fielding calls and doing a lot of listening-filling up page after page in the yellow ledger of his mind.

"Everybody and his brother has approached him," said an executive at a major Wall Street firm who is close to Mr. Rubin. "Bob's nature is so meticulous that my guess is he would have some kind of preliminary discussion with pretty much anybody. My sense is he's not on the verge of a decision."

It's not just the big investment banks, either. Mr. Rubin has friends from Wall Street and the Clinton Administration who are doing quite well for themselves and who are in a position to provide him with a nice quiet context in which to make gobs of discreet money. Some speculate that Mr. Rubin might be inclined to join the Beacon Group, a private equity and merger firm, founded by former Goldman partner Geoffrey Boisi, or AEA Investors, a buyout fund led by former Goldman senior partner John Whitehead. Another rumor has him thinking of joining forces with former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, who is now an investment banker at Forstmann Little & Company. "I'm a partner at Forstmann Little," Mr. Bowles told The Observer . "I'm happy as a partner at Forstmann Little, and I'm gonna stay at Forstmann Little. But Bob and I are very close friends. You know, we're talking about what he may do. He has a lot of options."

Oh, so many options, so many rumors. What about that pair of big-time hedge fund managers who have recently suffered from languishing returns and untimely redemptions: Julian Robertson and George Soros? Their beleaguered funds might benefit by hiring a financial star of his stature (if not a trader with his macroeconomic background), and so people have speculated that he might be talking to them. One Wall Street executive even swore he'd heard that Mr. Rubin has been talking to Thomas Weisel, the San Francisco-based investment banker. Not likely.

"Bob Rubin is not a name you can take to Silicon Valley and bring back a piece of business with," said a West Coast investment banker.

"I'm not sure he wants to run something, even if there are those kind of jobs available," said a friend. "But my sense is he doesn't want to be a figurehead. It's just not his style."

And what of his commitment to good works, as reflected in his current job description as chairman of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a support group for community development corporations?

"Is this the time when he makes the perfect synthesis of his public and private skills?" asked William Mulrow, a senior vice president of Gabelli Asset Management Company who is involved in Democratic Party politics. "I hope so. Because it would be good for all of us."

Good for all of us, good for Bob-these are separate entries on the yellow pad, but he'd like to make them one. University president has a nice ring to it, but then he would have to spend his waking hours in the public eye, hustling for dollars. For a public figure, he is a private man. He has just slipped out of the limelight. He may not want to step back into it right away.

Yet given his stature, people seem to want more of him than just a handful of board appointments and a lucrative gig at a private equity fund.

After all, this is a man who managed a remarkable feat: he left Washington with an even better reputation than he had when he arrived. While his colleagues in the Clinton administration were flayed alive by special prosecutors and political enemies, Mr. Rubin became a globetrotting superhero able to quell foreign economic crises in a single calming euphemism.

He rescued the Mexican peso. He prevented the implosion of the South Korean economy. He kept Wall Street from panicking when Russia collapsed, and again during a Brazilian currency crisis. In an era in which monetary policy has overtaken foreign policy on the global stage, Mr. Rubin accumulated the sort of power and mystique once reserved for the likes of Henry Kissinger and Dean Acheson.

And he performed well on the domestic front, too. It was Mr. Rubin who persuaded Bill Clinton to focus on deficit reduction, a policy that has done more than anything to justify his Presidency and save his ass.

Now here's the problem: that could all work against Mr. Rubin. He is eminently qualified to run any major investment bank. But when last we checked, there weren't many openings. So somebody would have to step aside for Mr. Rubin, or be forced out. It isn't likely that, say, Douglas (Sandy) Warner, chief executive of J.P. Morgan & Company, or Bear Stearns & Company chief James Cayne, or Henry Paulson, head of Goldman, would happily move aside to let Mr. Rubin take over their posts. "Most firms have people in the jobs that he would be qualified for," said Leslie Gordon, managing director of Korn-Ferry International, an executive recruiting firm. "While they might not be as good as he is, they might not want to give up their jobs."

Then there are all the heirs apparent, who would probably be less inclined to cheer on the new guy, Mr. Rubin. "If you were one of the folks aspiring to be the C.E.O., I'm sure you would be grateful that you would have the opportunity to work with him," said former Goldman chairman Jon Corzine, a friend of Mr. Rubin. "But you might be frustrated that such a capable person would be in the position you aspire to."

Another column in the yellow pad must be devoted to the possibility of failure. Just look at what happened to Frank Newman, who basically ran Bankers Trust Corporation into the ground before escaping with a $70 million payout. It may be hard to be believe now, but Mr. Newman, a former deputy treasury secretary, was once known as "Mr. Credibility" by his colleagues.

Mr. Rubin may be too savvy for that. Flopping in pursuit of Mammon would kill the golden-boy image he has crafted. Upon returning to Wall Street, he might find it a dull and narrow place. The business of grappling for deals and negotiating fees can't possibly match up to his adventures as Treasury Secretary. So he may have to lower his sights and raise his standards.

"You have to remember Bob's career," said a Wall Street banker who knows him well. "Bob spent years as a real day-to-day manager. I don't think he wants to do that again. Before that, he was doing risk arbitrage and trading. I don't think he wants to do that again. He's not going back to Goldman. I think when he comes back, it's going to be in a different kind of role. My guess is it would be as some kind of a senior statesman, a little bit of rainmaking, a little bit of policy adviser. He's probably a little out of date about what goes on on Wall Street, but he's so up-to-date on what goes on in the rest of the world, most people would think he could make a contribution."

Jobs like that don't come along every day, and Mr. Rubin may be getting a little impatient. "I think he's had enough," said a friend. "That's my sense. But, look, he's very careful. He's very careful. And I just don't think he's going to do anything until he's sure it's the right thing."

"Bob is doing his usual job of looking at the plusses and minuses of all of his options," said Mr. Bowles, his Clinton Administration pal. "Once he walks through those mental gymnastics, he'll make a great decision. He always does."