Pandit Is Frozen While Citigroup Teeters

Only 9,000 gone. Still 350,000. Cutting 10%, not of the bank but of the investment banking division.

Yep, talking about Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) and the incredible non-shrinking bank.

For months now we have been hearing about 10% layoffs, over and over again. Yet what has happened here? They are still at 350,000! Still.

Here's the deal. I would bet that Citigroup needs more money than just about any bank in the world in order to be fully reserved.

I do not expect that to happen just from fund raising, even though I do hear -- from Chris Matthews' show this weekend -- of talk of a trillion-dollar sovereign fund that would be a natural to tide people over.

But the inability to shrink the bank below 350,000 shows that Vikram Pandit has still not bitten the bullet. He has not undone any of the vast edifice that Chuck Prince built, nor has he solved all of the off-balance-sheet commitments that Prince made without knowing it.

How little has Pandit done? Consider this: Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Cramer's Take) with the best balance sheet and the healthiest margins, has cut about the same number of investment bankers!

The whole thing is surreal. This bank must be dismantled now. Oh, and I bet these firings don't even occur. Pandit seems paralyzed, incapable of selling or firing on any scale that matters.

I would stay short Citigroup and put out more right here.

Random musings: Bunge (BG - commentary - Cramer's Take) is brilliant, using its stock to become a fully integrated corn producer. So smart.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs.

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