Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

Wall Street was stunned Tuesday when Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit abruptly resigned from the firm after five years on the job.

Pandit told The New York Times that his decision to leave "was something that I had been thinking about for a while" and he approached Citigroup Chairman Mike O'Neill about the possibility on Monday night.

O'Neill purportedly did not persuade Pandit to stay. According to various reports, Citigroup board members, including Mr. O'Neill, had become increasingly disenchanted and frustrated with Pandit and had been contemplating a replacement before Pandit's official announcement.

William Cohan, author of "Power and Money: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" and a veteran Wall Street watcher, says Pandit was most likely pushed out from his C-suite office.

"Nobody leaves these jobs voluntarily," Cohan says in an interview with The Daily Ticker. Pandit "wasn't ready to leave, he did not want to leave. This came upon him

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

Less than three weeks to go before the presidential election and the race is essentially tied. That could change as a result of Tuesday night's very spirited second presidential debate. A CNN poll is calling a clear Obama win 46-39, but broader election polls aren't out yet.

"The headlines will say Obama is back" after that "first terrible debate," says Olivier Knox, White House correspondent for Yahoo! News. He tells the Daily Ticker the key question now is whether Obama's performance persuaded undecided independent voters to vote for him.

Related: More from Yahoo!'s The Ticket

The economy figured prominently in last night's debate held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island. Romney argued that the economy hasn't improved under President Obama, citing high unemployment, a doubling of gasoline prices at the pump and many other economic statistics. He offered instead his "five-point plan" to grow the economy through more trade, more oil

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

The rebirth of American manufacturing has been widely discussed by both presidential candidates on the campaign trail and was a topic of dispute at the second presidential debate Tuesday night.

In response to a question during Tuesday's debate on how to create jobs in the U.S., President Barack Obama highlighted the manufacturing sector. The president said he wants to "build on the five million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone."

"There are a bunch of things we can do to make sure your future is bright," said Obama. "Number one, I want to build manufacturing jobs in this country again. Now when Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt. I said we're going to bet on American workers and the American auto industry and it's come surging back."

In recent weeks, Obama has touted his record of creating more than a half of million manufacturing jobs during his term. He has also promised to create 1

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

Food prices have been rising steadily around the world and this summer's drought isn't the only reason why, according to Frederick Kaufman, author of "Bet the Farm: How Food STOPPED Being Food."

Kaufman tells The Daily Ticker that the price of global grains -- the primary dietary staple for most people on the planet -- have tripled since 2002 after decades of stability. "Something new has come to this market and we're seeing absolute levels of volatility that we've never seen before," Kaufman says.

Related: World food prices rise, stay close to crisis levels: UN

That new development, he notes, is the exponential growth of commodity derivatives. U.S. derivatives trading in wheat alone has surged from $10 billion to $300 billion in less than a year, says Kaufman. "Speculators are completely overwhelming" the commodity futures market, says Kaufman, "subverting a market that has worked so well for over a hundred years."

Traditionally the commodity

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

Some developments in banking not related to Vikram Pandit for your consideration:

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering providing lenders a "legal shield" against future litigation if the banks make "qualified" loans, The WSJ reports.
• NY Fed President William Dudley is worried about "concentration of mortgage origination volumes at a few key financial institutions."

At issue here is the fact that banks aren't "passing through" the zero interest rates being granted by the Fed. Sure, mortgage rates are at or near record lows but have you tried to get a mortgage lately? If you don't have stellar credit score and a big down payment, it's nearly impossible to get a loan these days; and even then, it ain't easy.

Related: Getting a Mortgage Shouldn't Be This Hard: Housing Finance Gets 'Taken to Task'

Of course, nobody wants banks going back to the days of granting loans to anyone who can fog a mirror, but both the CFPB and Dudley are

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

Since the first presidential debate in Denver two weeks ago, Mitt Romney has staged an amazing surge in the polls. Many Americans agree with pundits that Romney clobbered a surprisingly passive President Obama in the debate, and Romney has gone from nearly-hopeless underdog to, in some polls, the front-runner.

That puts even more pressure on Obama to put on a strong performance in the second debate.

Related: Romney's Surge in the Polls Not to Blame for Stalled Rally: Weisenthal

One thing Obama can do to help himself is rebut the Romney charge that Obama "can't run on his record."

Obama's record, at least with respect to the economy, has been solid — especially relative to the economy of the prior adminstration.

Before Obama took office, the economy was in freefall, obliterated by tax cuts, runaway government spending, massive consumer debts, and lax regulatory culture of the prior administration.

The moment Obama arrived and implemented the

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

The growing gap between the top 1% and the rest of the U.S. population has emerged as a major issue in this year's presidential campaign, but it's not likely to narrow much no matter who wins, says Chrystia Freeland, author of the new book "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else."

As the title suggests, "the increase in income inequality" in the U.S. is not just a domestic development but "is happening in all Western industrialized countries," Freeland tells The Daily Ticker in the accompanying interview. "And crucially you're seeing the same phenomenon in the big emerging market economies."

Related: The Betrayal of the American Dream

Freeland says globalization is at the root of income inequality around the world. Both capital and labor are global therefore businesses leaders must maintain a global perspective, says Freeland.

"Inevitably that means the super-elite see themselves as citizens of planet earth"

Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!

Mitt Romney is holding on to his post-debate bounce ahead of Tuesday night's second presidential debate, according to a new poll by POLITICO/George Washington University. President Obama is leading the former Massachusetts governor by a very small margin, 49% to 48%.

The poll also shows Romney leading 50% to 48% in the vast majority of battleground states, including Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.

Related: Why Does Wall Street Dislike President Obama So Much?

Business Insider's Deputy Editor Joe Weisenthal joined The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task to discuss what this means for the market. Both the S&P 500 Index (GSPC) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) are down roughly 2% in the last month.

Weisenthal says the Street believes that Romney, if elected president, would not re-appoint Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when his terms expires at the end of 2013. The markets want Bernanke to remain at the Fed because of Bernanke's loose