Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary under the Clinton administration and member of Goldman Sachs for 26 years, began a period of deregulation of the American economy, in particular of the financial markets. Rather than leading to the “general good,” the already corrupt financial market, and Goldman Sachs in particular, exploited the lack of management and milked the newly unregulated markets. For example, when guidelines in place since the Great Depression governing whether or not a company could be taken public were abolished, Goldman and other investment firms took companies public "with [not] much more than scribbled pot-fed ideas on napkins from ingenious bong smokers…[which were] advertised by the media and sold to the public for mega-millions.” (Taibbi 2010). that the market did not meet the conditions required for Smith's ideal economy to work; for a free market economy, there must be a competitive market, perfect information, and extremely low if not zero transaction costs (Lesson 09-Capitalism) In reality, the market had an unbalanced competitive market due to the size of companies like Goldman Sachs, false information spread by companies to induce customers to make risky investments, and high transaction costs due to banks forcibly pushing up prices. prices ( Taibbi 2010). Therefore, instead of an increase in efficiency, the economy suffered a sharp decline due to the corrupt and greedy enterprises of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street figures.