RUBIN AT CITIGROUP: NICE 'N' COMFY

Former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin will be paid more that $15 million this year by his new employer, Citigroup. And that doesn't include stock options, worth another $20 million or so. At the Treasury department, Rubin was scraping by with a salary of $152,000 per year. According to the New York Times, Rubin's approximately $35 million represents a new record for compensation at the "No. 2" executive level.

Citigroup's No. 1 is Sandy Weil, in case you're keeping track-- and we think you should, so you have someone to curse out loud the next time you're in line at Citibank, trying to cash your meager paycheck, and the tellers are sauntering around, chatting, behind the thick Plexiglas, instead of stepping lively. Weil received much of his compensation last year in the form of stock and stock options valued at nearly $45 million.

No. 2 had been consumer banking pioneer John S. Reed, whom we've kicked around before in this space. But he's "retiring" this year-- actually, we suspect he's been roughly handled by the titans of Citigroup-- so we're going to very gentle with him from now on.