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Meredith Whitney was on CNBC in London this morning. She concentrates her comments on mortgages and banking. She sees the winter lull as a harbinger of renewed softness in the housing market.
Note: the FOMC statement today reiterated the ending dates for MBS purchases. Let’s see how this plays out for mortgage rates in April and [...]

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John Hussman’s latest weekly contribution contends that the market is now extremely overvalued, to the point where long-term returns will likely be low.
As of last week, the S&P 500 nearly matched the richest valuations, on normalized earnings, ever observed prior to 1995. While it is quite true that valuations have been higher for the majority [...]

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I am not sure I buy Meredith Whitney’s assertion that the government is “out of bullets” in its quest to prop up the economy. It’s a matter of political will more than anything else. Nevertheless, I do agree with her basic premise in the CNBC video below that the financial sector is likely to see [...]

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Below is a CNBC video with Meredith Whitney in which she joins Nouriel Roubini on the doom and gloom parade.  Over the summer, both Whitney and Roubini were fairly optimistic. In June I said:
Think of the consensus forecast as an anchor which restricts the outlook of any individual forecaster afraid of failing unconventionally.
In Roubini’s case [...]

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Meredith Whitney downgraded Goldman Sachs from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral’ today.  Previously, Goldman had been her only buy recommended stock, all of the others rated neutral or ‘sell.’  Why did she do it?
FT Alphaville has the answer:
We are downgrading shares of Goldman Sachs to Neutral from Buy after over a 34% run in price since their [...]

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Just when I was wondering where Meredith Whitney had gone, she’s back.  But she has a whole new tone to her.  In this interview on CNBC, she says she is expecting a monster number from Goldman (GS) tomorrow morning, in 2010 and in 2011. She is well above the street on Goldman. She even uses [...]

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Below is a video of Meredith Whitney talking to Maria Bartiromo earlier today on CNBC (hat tip Calculated Risk).  In the video she suggests that banks might be able to beat earnings estimates for another one or two quarters before the lack of earnings power from deleveraging and the lack of the securitized business model [...]

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The Bloomberg video below makes it seem that Whitney believes the stress tests are a sham. She says the tests are a theoretical exercise whereby banks ask: “what will our earnings power be in two years after we sell off these ‘toxic’ assets?” She goes on to suggest that the answer to this question [...]

Meredith Whitney, the well-known former Oppenheimer analyst had some interesting words to say on CNBC about the banking sector, nationalization, dividends and Citigroup. Take a look.

The statements coming from Meredith Whitney in this video interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo could not be more blunt: the financial serves sector is weak, needs bailout money and investors will be diluted. As a result, she expects selling pressure to continue. She also mentions that a number of shotgun weddings are likely in order to stave off bankruptcy amongst weaker firms – the unstated quid pro quo obviously being bailout money for the acquirer.

This is a very good video to get a broad sense of the state of financial services.