The Wall Street Journal says that Citigroup (NYSE:C) CEO Vikram Pandit has the support of the board. That is even with the bank likely to lose another $10 billion in the most recent quarter. Over at The New York Times, the business desk sees Citi sacking its chairman. "Federal banking regulators are pressing Citigroup to shake up its board and replace its chairman, Winfried F. W. Bischoff, in an effort to restore confidence in the beleaguered financial giant."

Since Pandit and Bischoff have overlapped during much of their time in power, the division of blame does not make a great deal of sense.

It would appear the government and board at the bank want to show that someone was punished for Citi's performance. Director Robert Rubin has already left. That was apparently not enough of a sacrifice. The reality of the matter is that the whole board and most of management have been part of the Citi strategic decision-making process for the last year to two years. There is plenty of responsibility to go around.

It sounds like Bischoff is gone. But, it is just a little theater. He did not do anything special except to sit on a board with a number of people who made a remarkable number of mistakes.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The high and the mighty at Citigroup (NYSE: C) will not take bonuses for 2008. That includes CEO Vikram Pandit, Chairman Win Bischoff, and board member extraordinaire Robert Rubin.

It may save Citi shareholders a few million dollars, but it is hardly much of a penalty for an awful year in which the bank's stock fell 77%. The management at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) skipped bonuses and their shares were only down 58%.

The bonus cuts are just window dressing. Rubin has made millions of dollars serving on the Citi board. According to Bloomberg, "Pandit got $165 million from Citigroup in 2007 when he sold Old Lane Partners LP, the hedge fund he co-founded and ran."

Put another way, the loss of bonus money probably means very little to these people. The humiliation is a greater pain than the financial sacrifice.

That really leaves no penalty other than to fire the three. So far, the Citi board has shown it does not have the guts to do that.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup (NYSE: C), and his top managers may give up their 2008 bonuses as a show that they are willing to make sacrifices after the federal government saved the bank with a huge bailout package. Board member Robert Rubin may have been the first to suggest the move.

According to the FT, "People close to the situation said last week's government rescue made it almost impossible for Citi's board to award cash bonuses to other senior executives, led by chief executive Vikram Pandit."

For anyone not paying attention to the Citi mess, its stock has been down as much as 90% this year. The federal government is pouring money into the bank like water, and the company is still losing money due to consumer credit losses, bad LBO loans, and mortgage derivatives.

To put a point on it, why would the Citi board even consider bonuses in the first place without the risk of being tarred and feathered by shareholders and the government?

"Giving up" bonuses is a meaningless gesture for executives who do not deserve them and would likely get nothing in the first place. Maybe it is nice PR.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

While kudos should be given to the Fed for trying to do whatever it takes to shore up the banking system, what is a bit more worrisome is how both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton approach the problem. Obviously they started out by blaming President Bush for these problems.

According to an AP report:

"Now we are in the soup and we better get ourselves out of it before the consequences get drastic," Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. Barack Obama said: "History will not judge President Bush kindly for his failure to act in a way that could've prevented or alleviated this economic crisis."

Does Obama think that the President could have prevented the entire economic crisis, had he acted differently? In fact I postulate that one of the major reasons that Wall Street is in the current situation is because of a precedent taken 10 years ago by then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. He bailed out his Wall Street buddies after they were set to lose billions in bad investments in Asia, among other places. Go figure that after they get saved once, they go ahead a decade later and continue to make investments without taking into account risk. They knew that they could get away with it because they would get bailed out. And guess what? They are going to get bailed out.

The fact is that the Fed, by injecting liquidity, is doing exactly what it should be doing to try and get the banking system back on track. Many economists believe that had the same strategy been implemented in 1929, there never would have been a Great Depression. Back then they took money out of the system and companies went bankrupt. The Fed is making no such mistake this time.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. DISCLOSURE: Writer's fund has no position in any stock mentioned, as of 3/17/08.

With news the embattled mortgage lender Northern Rock is being nationalized by the British government, until it can find a buyer, the question arises whether this is a good move or not?

Analysts at Bear Stearns said that the government's move is positive for the sector. The expected managed decline in the Northern Rock balance sheet should create less competitive mortgage market conditions," said analyst Robert Sage.

Who is this positive for? Certainly not the consumer. Competitive mortgage markets are the best thing that can happen to a consumer. Why should the consumer have to pay higher mortgage rates? Does this analyst think that the government setting mortgage rates is helpful in anyway? Let's not forget that the banks are responsible for this whole mess. Had they actually been careful in their lending practices, we wouldn't be in the mess we are currently in.

BusinessWeek reports that former Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) Chair Robert Rubin picked Vikram Pandit because Rubin thought Pandit could "drive the vision, drive the execution." I welcome a comment from anyone who can explain what that means. What comes to my mind is that Pandit is going to drive an execution squad behind him ready to gun down anyone who gets in his way.

I am not thrilled with Pandit's ascension and it looks like he is going to turn one of his weaknesses -- a lack of consumer banking expertise in a bank that gets half its income from that business -- into a strength. How so? Pandit looks poised to sell Citi's credit card business. I guess if Citi dumps all the consumer businesses, then he'll know something about the businesses that remain.

To increase the value of Citi's stock, I'd recommend three steps:

As expected, Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) today named Vikram Pandit as its new CEO, replacing the hugely unpopular Charles Prince. Acting CEO Win Bischoff replaced former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin as chairman. Rubin didn't want the job permanently.

As pundits including CNBC's Charles Gasparino pointed out, Citigroup's board didn't feel that Pandit had enough experience to get both jobs. That's no slight against Pandit, who joined New York-based Citigroup after selling the company his hedge fund for $900 million. Few if any people are experienced in the huge variety of business at Citigroup which is why Pandit says "simplifying the company's organizational structure and aligning our businesses and resources with appropriate goals and economic realities will be among our initial priorities."

So what does that mean?

Will Citigroup exit its retail business and focus on corporate banking? Are more job cuts coming down the pike? Investors are demanding quick answers to these and many other questions.

``They need somebody who can get in there and put some color on exactly where the risks are and what they're doing to address that,'' Johnson Asset Management analyst William Fitzpatrick, told Bloomberg News. ``The stock's been in freefall for the last couple of months.''

Shares of Citigroup, which are down 40% this year, fell further today with other financial stocks amid disappointment over the Fed's rate cut announcement

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) may name Vikram Pandit, the former Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) executive who sold his hedge fund to the New York-based financial services giant for $800 million in July, as the company's new CEO this week, according to various media reports.

The leak of Pandit's front-runner status is an interesting one. Clearly, the beleaguered Wall Street firm thinks that his appointment as CEO is going to be criticized by shareholders, so it decided to "get ahead of the story."

The problem, it seems, may be with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who became chairman after Chuck Prince was ousted. Rubin doesn't want the job permanently, which raises the question of whether Citigroup will ask him to stick around for a while if Pandit becomes CEO, whether it names a new chairman or whether it gives Pandit both jobs from the start, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citigroup is in a pickle.

Shareholders abhor a leadership vacuum, but want the next CEO to be someone with whom they have absolute confidence. But if CItigroup doesn't give Pandit both jobs or a clear path toward both jobs, there is a good chance that he will be hired away by a rival firm.

This may turn out to be a holiday season only The Grinch could love.

The closely watched Conference Board index of consumer confidence fell to 87.3 in November, its lowest level since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, while house values fell 4.5% in the third quarter, the biggest drop since S&P/Case-Schiller started tracking them in 1988, according to Bloomberg News. Rising foreclosures will sap billions from major metropolitan areas next year, according to a report released today by the National Conference of Mayors.

To put it bluntly, despite the hoopla over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, all indications show that consumers are telling retailers "bah humbug." Does this mean that Santa (AKA Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke) will bring more holiday rate cuts? At least one fed official says no.

In a speech today in Rochester, NY, Charles Plosser of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said that he isn't inclined to seek another rate cut unless growth in 2008 is much weaker than expected. Besides, a weaker economic outlook for next year was considered when the Fed cut rates in October.

The stock market, though, continues to act irrationally.

Today, the Dow Jones industrial average surged 215 points to 12,958.44 after Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) got a $7.5 billion investment from a fund tied to the government of Abu Dhabi. That's nice but as Bloomberg News points out, that investment came with a steep price.

"Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank, is paying a "junk bond'' rate to uphold Chairman Robert Rubin's pledge to preserve the dividend and weather this year's mortgage-market decline," the news service says. "The 11 percent interest rate on $7.5 billion of convertible shares that Citigroup sold to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is almost double the rate it offers bond investors."

This proves that there is no so such thing as a free lunch.

Bloomberg News reports that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson keeps trying to cheer lead the dollar back up. His boss was a cheerleader at Andover so Paulson fits right in. Just one little problem -- government economic policies are at odds with the cheer.

This topic is important to everyone, particularly now as Americans climb into their cars for Thanksgiving. That's because oil is denominated in dollars so the weaker the dollar gets, the higher oil climbs. If you've been looking at the gas pumps recently, you know that the price of gas is rising.

Paulson's problem is he seems to think that confidence in the currency comes from repeating the phrase "strong U.S. economy." Or as he put it: "The U.S. has a very competitive, strong economy that's proven itself over many years. The dollar has been the world's reserve currency since World War II and there's a reason."

With all the focus on the US Dollar's current free-fall and pundits predicting further weakness for the greenback, a little perspective is in order.

First of all, where have all the pundits been for the last five years? It's not like the dollars fall from grace started yesterday. In fact the dollar's fall has been a result of global growth, not a faltering US economy. The fact is that even with the subprime mess, rising commodity prices and the war in Iraq, the US economy is growing just fine. Could all the doomsayers in the media have a political agenda? Remember, an election is approaching.

Citigroup (NYSE: C) announced $8-11 billion in write downs on its $55 billion exposure in U.S. subprime mortgages/CDOs.

C announced Charles Prince, Chairman and CEO has elected to retire from C. Sir Win Bischoff, will serve as acting CEO and Robert Rubin, will serve as Chairman of the Board.

C is recently trading at $37 in pre-open trading, below its close of $37.73.

Goldman Sachs lowered its 12-month price target to $48 from $51.

C November option implied volatility is at 72, December is at 51, above its 26-week average of 27 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price risks.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

In the weeks ahead, BloggingStocks will take an in-depth look at the U.S. dollar's decline, its impact on the global and U.S. economies, as well as on job creation, trade, and investment.

Remonstrations about the weak U.S. dollar are getting to be a little bit like what Mark Twain said about the weather:

"Everyone seems to complain about the weather, but no one ever seems to be able to do anything about it," Twain said.

Similarly, everyone seems to complain about the weak U.S. dollar, but no one ever seems to be able to do anything about it.

This time it was former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who Tuesday told Bloomberg News that relying on a falling currency to increase exports isn't a "sound approach" and said policies should be implemented to strengthen the dollar.

Bloomberg News reports that on August 17th, in the midst of the August credit crunch, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sought the advice of Citigroup (NYSE: C) Chairman and Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, mortgage backed securities inventor Lewis Ranieri and hedge fund honcho Ray Dalio of $32.1 billion Bridgewater Associates. Kenneth H. Thomas, a Wharton lecturer, obtained the information on Bernanke's calls and contacts under the Freedom of Information Act.

Although there are no details of what Bernanke discussed with these investment luminaries, I applaud him for making the effort. One of the things that helped Alan Greenspan to make decisions was the network of business and finance leaders which he had created when he headed his own consulting firm prior to his move to Washington. Such real world contacts are particularly important for Bernanke to develop given his academic background.

It would be very helpful for investors to know how Bernanke makes his decisions. But this little glimpse into his schedule reveals an obvious point -- it would be very difficult to believe that anyone Bernanke spoke with would not have obtained very valuable information from which they could profit. And we'll never know whether Rubin, Ranieri, or Dalio did just that.

The rest of us can always eat cake.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) and current Treasury Secretary, has been spouting pablum about how he's never seen such a strong global economy. He's just following in the footsteps of cheerleader-in-chief, George W. Bush.

But Paulson is no dummy. He knows that his words have a tremendous impact on investors around the world who are nervous about the recent rapid market break. The key question is whether he knows enough to keep all the economic imbalances in the global markets from making his optimistic comments look foolish.

I'd like to hear how he would keep the massive debt load which the U.S. economy is carrying from creating a sharp economic reversal. Specifically, if the economy is so strong, I'd like to hear Paulson explain away these questions: