Former U.S. Treasury Sec. Rubin sees more uncertainty

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.

"We started the decade with surpluses and we had good federal revenues," Rubin said. "But instead, because of the fiscal policies put in place, we had deficits through all this period.

"What Senator Obama has said is that he is committed to restoring sound long-term fiscal conditions," Rubin said. "I think that's essential if we're going to have a good and strong economy. He said he'll pay for everything he's going to do with respect to Social Security and Medicare."

(Reporting by David Wiessler, editing by Bill Trott)