Lunch With Fischer, Rubin Drawing Top Bid at Playwrights Auction

(Bloomberg) -- Lunch with Stanley Fischer is a hot item in an online charity auction benefiting Playwrights Horizons, a Manhattan theater company.

An hour with Janet Yellen’s former deputy at the Federal Reserve was going for $8,500 on Friday morning, the highest bid for more than 30 packages in the auction, which also includes stays at private homes in Argentina and Sun Valley, Idaho. Bidding started Wednesday and is open until June 6 when a second round of items will be posted. Previous lunches have gone for more than $20,000.

The winner of the Fischer lunch will also dine with Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who’s supported the theater for about 30 years and whose wife, Judith Rubin, is chair of Playwrights Horizons. Rubin has previously corralled Tim Geithner and Larry Summers for the package, with the theater company picking up the meal tab.

Potential topics: It has to be the bond market, especially after one the most successful bets this year was trusting the Fed would stick to its word. Fischer has also recently said he’s more concerned about global political instability than economics. And one might talk to Rubin about existentialism. He recently wrote about a philosophy class he took on the subject and its influence on his career at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and in government.

Proceeds from the auction are used to develop American writers. The company originated productions of “Sunday in the Park with George” by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim and “Clybourne Park” by Bruce Norris, which both won Pulitzer Prizes, as well as “Lobby Hero” by Kenneth Lonergan, currently being revived on Broadway.

The auction is taking place online at CharityBuzz.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill

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