Pandit - "We at Citi will get there"

Contributing editor Joe Hagan at nymag.com examines just how Citi CEO Vikram Pandit finally reached the top—just in time to see Wall Street, Citicorp, and all his dreams come crashing down…

How had Citigroup come to this? Blame began to circulate, with Rubin targeted as the alleged architect of the company’s high-risk investments. Before the spotlight could find him, Pandit, under pressure to defend Citigroup and give investors confidence that he was running the company, finally agreed to come out of hiding and appear on Charlie Rose. The performance was a slightly uncomfortable tap dance. The message: No one could have predicted this, no one is to blame, and there would be no further need for government bailouts.

"We moved really fast,” Pandit told Rose. “What this market tells you is one should have moved even faster. And I keep thinking about it, is there something else I could have done sooner than what I did … But the most important thing, Charlie, is that it’s very, very important to look forward from where we are … We need to do a lot of hard work to figure out how to get from here to there.”

“And you are confident that we can get there?” asked Rose.

Pandit tried on his best inspirational-leader voice: “We, as a country, have no choice. We, at Citi, will get there.”