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<p>If Wall Street thinks things are bad now, just wait — they’re about to get worse.</p> <p>The US financial sector is facing an epic round of layoffs that could hit 100,000 workers as the big banks wrestle with a global contraction and a sluggish economic recovery in the US, according to prominent analyst Meredith Whitney.</p>

MEREDITH WHITNEY: I Have Not Been This Bullish On The US And Equities In My Career Linette LopezMarch 18, 2013 Meredith Whitney was just on CNBC's Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo and the normally skeptical bank analyst came out as a super-bull for the U.S. economy and equities. "Would you put new money to work in this market right here?" Bartiromo asked her. "Yes, absolutely," said Whitney. "I have not been this constructive and bullish on US equities in my career." Whitney discussed two specific financial stocks that she really liked. First she mentioned Bank of America saying that it...

Deutsche Bank is laying off 1900 people. 1500 of them are in the investment bank. Here's the press release. This news comes as Meredith Whitney's been chatting with Tom Keene on Bloomberg TV this morning, and just as she started explaining why she thought Wall Street's big banks would initiate massive layoffs (50,000, actually). Deutsche Bank's stock is shooting up, according to Bloomberg. That makes sense according to Whitney's thesis as she explained it to Maria Bartiromo last week— the market will reward banks that shrink their staff and their business.

Jeff Cox at CNBC.com spotlights one area where she's wildly bullish. She likes the agriculture and commodity states that are 'right-to-work' where businesses are creating jobs: "I am wildly bullish on the U.S. in particular markets...I think the U.S. market looks terrific (though) as a collective the U.S. market is not going to grow all together," she said during a "Closing Bell" interview. "There's opportunity from Texas all the way up to North Dakota, and you can play every industry on that basis," she added. "It's the agriculture-commodity belt — also the Right to Work states. That's where businesses are...

Meredith Whitney was on CNBC's Closing Bell today. Jeff Cox at CNBC.com spotlights one area where she's wildly bullish. She likes the agriculture and commodity states that are 'right-to-work' where businesses are creating jobs: "I am wildly bullish on the U.S. in particular markets...I think the U.S. market looks terrific (though) as a collective the U.S. market is not going to grow all together," she said during a "Closing Bell" interview.  "There's opportunity from Texas all the way up to North Dakota, and you can play every industry on that basis," she added. "It's the agriculture-commodity belt — also the...

Meredith Whitney Is About To Seriously Double Down On Her Muni Doom Prediction Joe Weisenthal Feburary 21, 2012 Meredith Whitney first predicted widespread muni doom in late 2010, and so far that hasn't come to pass at all. Since then, her reputation has definitely taken some hits, but she's not giving up on her big call by any means. According to Kevin Roose at DealBook, Whitney will be coming out with a new book in December called: “Downgraded: Why the Next Economic Crisis Will Be Local.” The book is being put out by publishing house Portfolio. Dealbook posted this paragraph...

We're already in May, and so suddenly people are wondering: Where are all the muni market disasters we're supposed to be getting this year? Why has it been so quiet. Why haven't munis fallen, like Meredith Whitney said they would? Fear not: she hasn't given up. Speaking today at the Milken Conference in LA, she doubled down on her call for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of defaults saying, according to Bloomberg: "This municipal issue, you can criticize me for anything you want, I’m numb to it, because I have more conviction on this than I’ve had on any...

The muni market needed re-pricing, but now it has gotten way out of control, according to PIMCO's Christian Stracke and Joseph Narens. The pair explain that what's happening right now in the muni market makes a certain amount of sense. It's a bit like last year, when the market repriced sovereign risk to act like a credit product, rather than an interest rate product it was previously valued at. That meant yields were higher and the cost to insure the debt rose too as a result of investors realizing that, yes, a sovereign could actually default. Now that's happening with...

High-profile Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney's doomsday prediction that hundreds of billions of dollars in municipal bonds will evaporate in default over the next year has been condemned as improbable to irresponsible by just about anyone who knows anything about municipal finance. Cities and states rarely default on their debt, and for her prediction to be accurate, the economy would have to be getting much worse rather than somewhat better, as most data show. It's hard to imagine even places like California, New York and New Jersey somehow deciding not to pay back bondholders this year; governors in each state...

Who Has The Big Knife Out For Meredith Whitney? Robert WenzelFebruary 3, 2011 There's something very odd about the trashing Meredith Whitney is getting over her warnings on the municipal debt market. First, there's been the unending attack by Charlie Gasparino at FOX on her warning. Now word comes, via Gasparino, that a Congressional subcommittee, headed by Congressman Patrick McHenry, wants to look into the condition of the municipal bond market . Although Gasparino is painting the story as though it is somehow an investigation of Whitney. Writes Gasparino: "As part of this inquiry, the subcommittee is looking into the...

Meredith Whitney continues to take it from all sides! The latest attacker is Charlie Gasparino, who accuses her of causing a muni market panic that caused the recent sell-off, thus costing taxpayers millions. In a HuffPo column, he demands that Whitney release her gigantic report detailing why, exactly, she expects the market to crash this year. Of course, its her proprietary research, and it's her right to keep it for her paying clients, but it is interesting since last week on CNBC she said one of the reasons for doing this research was to illuminate the issue of municipal debt....

Meredith Whitney is not crying wolf. The analyst famed for correctly calling the implosion of banks and the ensuing credit crisis has been warning about defaults in the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market. She isn’t the only one. Jamie Dimon, Chief Executive of J.P. Morgan Chase recently commented that there are significant problems facing munis and technical defaults have already happened. He ought to know. Big banks like his backstop billions of dollars of muni obligations with letters of credit that they may not want to renew. The immediate, under-the-radar problem for the municipal bond market is that borrowers relied...

Meredith Whitney is on Squawk Box this morning, and we're 100% sure she'll be talking about the muni det fiasco she sees in 2011. We'll be covering key highlights live. * The conversation starts with JPMorgan and the dividend discussion. Rather than paying out cash, she favors JPMorgan acquiring in Asia, in particular standard chartered. This is the time to make major strategic acquisitions. * On the housing mess and where we are in the process? "Who knows?" Certainly the robosign issue has been put to bed. * Now she's talking the big topic: munis... "We've never said that any...

Meredith Whitney continues to get thumped by everyone under the sun for predicting on 60 Minutes that 50-100 American cities will go bust next year, triggering the next leg down in the financial crisis. Whitney's competitors, for example, are outraged (in part, no doubt, because she was on 60 Minutes, not them). Journalists and research firms are scrambling to refute her. Towns and cities are furious. Muni bond holders want blood. And so on. Which means that Meredith Whitney has done it again. Great Wall Street analysts make big, bold calls that make people think. And, right now, Meredith Whitney...

Just How Freaked Out Should You Be About A ‘Muni Meltdown’? Published: Thursday, 23 Dec 2010 | 11:31 AM ET By: Jason Farkas America is now officially worried about a municipal bond meltdown. In a piece called "Day of Reckoning," CBS 60 Minutes showcased financial analyst Meredith Whitney’s bold prediction that we will see “50 to 100 sizable [muni] defaults...more. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars of defaults.” It’s a frightening forecast. Another sign that the muni issue has captured America’s attention: the number of people searching for the term ‘municipal bond’ on Google has spiked in...

he bank shakeout is about to pick up steam. So says Meredith Whitney, the analyst who made headlines around this time three years ago by predicting the demise of Citi's (C) dividend. Whitney predicts in a report released Monday afternoon that profit-strapped U.S. banks will close 5,000 branches over 18 months. That would amount to about 5% of bank offices, and would mark a new twist in a decades-long consolidation process. There were more than 12,000 U.S. banking institutions as recently as 1992, but deregulation and global competition have fed the rise of megabanks like Bank of America (BAC) and...

As new regulations push banks toward safer investments and lending practices, the middle class will suffer the most, banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC. The 26 percent of mostly low-income Americans who don't have bank accounts—as well as the wealthy—are only marginally affected by tighter credit from more stringent banking regulations, Whitney said. But those in the middle class who have relied on access to credit will suffer as banks that "can't price risk now" become increasingly afraid to make loans.

Global securities firms, facing slowing revenue growth, will cut about 80,000 jobs, or 10% of current head count, over the next 18 months, banking analyst Meredith Whitney asserted in a recent report, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday on its website. “The key product drivers of Wall Street’s revenues and profits over the past decade have been in a structural decline over the past three years,” Whitney said in the report, dated Aug. 31. This year “marks the first year in many in which Wall Street-centric firms will go through structural changes,” she wrote.

Investors Should Avoid Banks 'At All Costs': Meredith Whitney Posted By: Krystina Gustafson | Special to CNBC.com CNBC.com | 17 May 2010 | 04:53 PM ET Investors should "avoid financials at all costs, particularly in the banking sector" because the Senate's financial reform bill will end up restricting credit and hurt bank earnings, well-known banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC. "Politicians have proven far worse than our worst expectations," she said in an interview. "It could be very bad for banks." Whitney cited two new credit card rules in the Senate bill as particularly onerous. One would force banks to...

<p>Noted analyst diverges with ratings cut, asks, 'why be greedy?</p> <p>NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- "Why be greedy?"</p> <p>That's the question star analyst Meredith Whitney asked her well-heeled clients on Tuesday as she went against the grain of recent Wall Street punditry and cut her rating on shares of Goldman Sachs /quotes/comstock/13*!gs/quotes/nls/gs (GS 188.99, +1.76, +0.94%) to neutral from buy.</p>