In an Uncertain World by Robert Rubin, Jacob Weisberg Page A
Authors: Robert Rubin, Jacob Weisberg
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found plenty of data and analysis from English-language sources to test various hypotheses about inflation. In 1995, when I met the Brazilian finance minister, Pedro Malan, heâd done his research. He said that his ministry had looked up my Harvard thesis and that my conclusions were largely on the mark.
Socially, Harvard was made up of subcultures. I wasnât really a part of any of them, but I liked to think of myself as someone who hung around coffeehousesâwhich in those days didnât mean Starbucks but places with a bohemian atmosphere and not particularly good coffee. I didnât actually go to coffeehouses very much, but occasionally I would stop by the Club Mount Auburn 47 or some other club, where people would sit around and some would-be Joan Baez would sing. I liked the sit-around-and-ponder-the-issues-of-life atmosphere.
One of the intellectual movements swirling around in the coffeehouse culture of those days was existentialism, and I related to that in some way. But my version of existentialism didnât have much to do with whatever I read of existential philosophy. Instead, I would describe it as an internalized sense of perspective. During my years at Harvard, I developed a feeling that, on the one hand, the here and now mattered a great deal, while on the other hand, in the totality of time and space, in some ultimate sense, that significance shrinks. How much will anything that happens today matter a hundred thousand years from now? Somehow, this internalized duality allowed me to maintain an intense involvement in whatever I was doing, while at the same time retaining a sense of perspective and a feeling that I could always opt for an entirely different kind of life.
Not until senior year did I really develop some sense of belonging at Harvard. In reality, my anxiety proved to be unrealistic early on in my college career. But holding on to it, while detrimental in some ways, may have been useful in others. Worry, if it doesnât undermine you, can be a powerful driver. After thinking I wasnât going to cross the finish line, I graduated from Harvard in 1960 with the unexpected distinctions of Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, as well as a summa minus on my senior thesis.
After graduation, I sent a tongue-in-cheek letter to the dean of admissions at Princeton, to which I had not been accepted four years earlier. âI imagine you track the people you graduate,â I wrote. âI thought you might be interested to know what happened to one of the people you rejected. I just wanted to tell you that I graduated from Harvard summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.â The dean wrote me back, âThank you for your note. Every year, we at Princeton feel it is our duty to reject a certain number of highly qualified people so that Harvard can have some good students too.â
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DURING MY SENIOR YEAR, I had applied to Harvard Law School as well as to the Harvard Ph.D. program in economics. I was admitted to both but couldnât decide which to do. In fact, I wasnât at all sure I wanted to do either, at least just then. I went back up to Cambridge in the fall and spent three days at the law school, but I wasnât ready to roll up my sleeves and cope with the stress of it after having just finished four intense years of college. Everyone else was buying books and looking serious, and that wasnât for me. So I went to speak to the assistant dean of the law school and told him that I was going to leave.
âYou just started,â he said. âYou canât just drop out. Youâve taken a place somebody else could have had.â
I told him that I was dropping out anyway.
âIf you drop out, I wonât readmit you unless there are some extenuating circumstances,â the dean said.
We talked some more, and the dean said that if Iâd go to see a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist said that I was making a reasonable decision, he would
Socially, Harvard was made up of subcultures. I wasnât really a part of any of them, but I liked to think of myself as someone who hung around coffeehousesâwhich in those days didnât mean Starbucks but places with a bohemian atmosphere and not particularly good coffee. I didnât actually go to coffeehouses very much, but occasionally I would stop by the Club Mount Auburn 47 or some other club, where people would sit around and some would-be Joan Baez would sing. I liked the sit-around-and-ponder-the-issues-of-life atmosphere.
One of the intellectual movements swirling around in the coffeehouse culture of those days was existentialism, and I related to that in some way. But my version of existentialism didnât have much to do with whatever I read of existential philosophy. Instead, I would describe it as an internalized sense of perspective. During my years at Harvard, I developed a feeling that, on the one hand, the here and now mattered a great deal, while on the other hand, in the totality of time and space, in some ultimate sense, that significance shrinks. How much will anything that happens today matter a hundred thousand years from now? Somehow, this internalized duality allowed me to maintain an intense involvement in whatever I was doing, while at the same time retaining a sense of perspective and a feeling that I could always opt for an entirely different kind of life.
Not until senior year did I really develop some sense of belonging at Harvard. In reality, my anxiety proved to be unrealistic early on in my college career. But holding on to it, while detrimental in some ways, may have been useful in others. Worry, if it doesnât undermine you, can be a powerful driver. After thinking I wasnât going to cross the finish line, I graduated from Harvard in 1960 with the unexpected distinctions of Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, as well as a summa minus on my senior thesis.
After graduation, I sent a tongue-in-cheek letter to the dean of admissions at Princeton, to which I had not been accepted four years earlier. âI imagine you track the people you graduate,â I wrote. âI thought you might be interested to know what happened to one of the people you rejected. I just wanted to tell you that I graduated from Harvard summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.â The dean wrote me back, âThank you for your note. Every year, we at Princeton feel it is our duty to reject a certain number of highly qualified people so that Harvard can have some good students too.â
  Â
DURING MY SENIOR YEAR, I had applied to Harvard Law School as well as to the Harvard Ph.D. program in economics. I was admitted to both but couldnât decide which to do. In fact, I wasnât at all sure I wanted to do either, at least just then. I went back up to Cambridge in the fall and spent three days at the law school, but I wasnât ready to roll up my sleeves and cope with the stress of it after having just finished four intense years of college. Everyone else was buying books and looking serious, and that wasnât for me. So I went to speak to the assistant dean of the law school and told him that I was going to leave.
âYou just started,â he said. âYou canât just drop out. Youâve taken a place somebody else could have had.â
I told him that I was dropping out anyway.
âIf you drop out, I wonât readmit you unless there are some extenuating circumstances,â the dean said.
We talked some more, and the dean said that if Iâd go to see a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist said that I was making a reasonable decision, he would
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