Last week's New York Times article, which blamed him for bringing down Citigroup and really the entire global economy, must have been difficult for Robert Rubin, who has spent the past twenty-odd years basking in the glow of economic hero worship, to take. And then Citigroup made it even worse, going so far out of their way to distance him from the egregiously bad decisions that led to their current state that he ended up just sounding like kind of a lame duck: "While Mr. Rubin is a member of the Board and plays an advisory and client service role at Citigroup, he was never an 'architect' nor was he a drafter of Citigroup's risk-taking plans," Citigroup vice-chairman Lewis Kaden wrote in a letter to the Times. And then there was CEO Vikram Pandit on Charlie Rose: "In the eleven months that I've been in this job as I worked with him, it's pretty clear that he doesn't drive the execution decisions." "It's pretty clear"? What is he, a painting on the wall?! Thanks a lot, Vikram. Clearly, Rubin's ego couldn't take it. Like a cocky serial killer on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, his determination to prove he was smarter than his investigators outweighed his common sense, and the former Treasury secretary decided to give two interviews, to The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, to set things right. Naturally, they only made him look even guiltier.

In both interviews, he refused to accept any responsibility for egging on the risk-taking that led to Citi's travails, claiming that as an emeritus board member he really didn't know anything about the day-to-day stuff that was going on. As he told the Journal:

"The board can't run the risk book of a company," he said. "The board as a whole is not going to have a granular knowledge" of operations.

And Newsweek:

"Actually, I'm probably close to 20 years beyond which I had a granular knowledge [of financial details]."

So, sure, even though he "knew what a CDO was," as he told the Journal, he wasn't expecting that anyone would actually, like, listen to him when he told the bank to grow their holdings of them or, furthermore, when he said "the only undervalued asset class in the world is risk." After all, he was just a doddering old man! And:

"I wouldn't run a financial institution based on someone's view about what markets would do."

Not that he wasn't worth the $115 million (excluding stock options) he took in from Citi in the past nine years:

Mr. Rubin said his pay was justified and that there were higher-paying opportunities available to him. "I bet there's not a single year where I couldn't have gone somewhere else and made more," he said.

Because after all, he was making some important decisions in the exact year that that company lost half its value. Or so he says when the Journal asks what he thought he'd accomplished, over that time period.

"I think I've been a very constructive part of the Citigroup environment. That has become particularly manifest since August '07. I have been very involved."

Oh God. This is so awkward, we actually closed our eyes. What was his strategy here? "I will begin by defending my salary, which I will later say was given to me for basically fly-fishing, then I will suddenly cop to being really involved during the worst possible moment in the bank's history"? Ugh. It's like when Angelina Jolie tried for ages to be like, "Brad and I only fell in love after he was divorced," and then let slip to Vogue about how they fell in love on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which they filmed when he was totally still married to Jennifer Aniston. Only all at once in the same interview. Anyway, Rubin should probably have consulted with Angelina before trying to work the press in his favor. She might have convinced him to avoid what will surely be pointed to as the "inflection point" of his fall from grace.

Rubin Defends His Role at Citi [WSJ]
Robert Rubin's Detail Deficit [Newsweek]
Citigroup claims NY Times 'misleading' on Rubin [Guardian UK]