Sun Aug 3, 1:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said on Sunday he sees the current uncertain economic situation continuing for "quite some period of time."

Rubin, who served at Treasury under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, appeared on CBS "Face the Nation" to promote the economic agenda of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"I think that the current difficulties, the current duress, I think the most likely scenario with respect to all of that is that it will likely continue for quite some period of time, could get a little bit worse," Rubin said.

"There's always some chance that matters could get better more rapidly but I think that's very low probability," he said. "And there's some chance, and hopefully it's a low probability, that things could get considerably worse."

Rubin, now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup, said Obama's policies could help return the country to the rosier economic times of the Clinton administration when the federal government had budget surpluses.

By Joseph A. Giannone and Jonathan Stempel Fri Aug 1, 8:27 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo plans to imminently charge Citigroup Inc (C.N), accusing it of fraudulently marketing and selling auction-rate securities, and destroying documents that had been subpoenaed.

In a letter Friday to the bank, David Markowitz, chief of the state's investor protection bureau, accused the largest U.S. bank by assets of having "repeatedly and persistently committed fraud" by falsely representing to customers that auction-rate debt was safe, liquid and the equivalent of cash.

He also said Citigroup destroyed audiotapes of phone calls on auction-rate debt that were subject to an April 14 subpoena. The bank learned in mid-June about the destruction, but failed to tell Cuomo's office until June 30, the letter said.