Meredith Whitney life and biography

Meredith Ann Whitney a New York City native is an American banking analyst who became an important contributor to some television programs for CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg News.

Meredith was educated from Brown University and she has worked with Oppenheimer & Co. But has now launched her own company, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC. Her father is Richard Whitney, a venture capitalist, who also worked in Richard Nixon's Department of Commerce.

Meredith Whitney has researched on the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act and on the success of credit card companies. Whitney is a stock analyst who does research on stocks, giving them ratings and recommendations, such as 'underperform', 'market perform' and 'outperform'. She is a pessimist for most parts, always expecting the prices to fall. She usually recommends shorts and this makes her very popular with hedge funds.

Whitney predicted the financial crunch of 2007, which was the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. The crunch occurred because of the deregulation of the financial industry. Borrowers were defaulting on loans and it became difficult to obtain loans during the crunch. Many people mistakenly thought the crunch to be a reaction to the stock bubble at the end of the 20th century.

Whitney also anticipated the fall in the prices of homes. The housing sector failed because mortgage lenders gave loans depending on credit scores and not on loan value. As a result, home buyers could not pay back their loans, which led to bad mortgages. The government tried to solve this problem by stimulating the economy and by bailing out companies. It helped those banks, that lent a helping hand to mortgage borrowers. But this tactic did not help the 'underwater' mortgage borrowers, who owed more than the current value of their homes.

Whitney also conducts research on banks and she had predicted that banks such as Citigroup, were in trouble. She had seen the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers coming. Whitney thinks that the Bank of America is doing better than Citigroup, but still not good enough. She had also known that Bear Stearns would go bankrupt, but hadn't written a report on it. The government is helping banks in borrowing money. Taxpayers are displeased that their money is being wasted on funding these banks. Whitney thinks banks are making profits and their stock prices are rising, only because the government is helping them. It is impossible to value bank stocks with the price-to-earnings ratio because the banks have no earnings; or by price-to-book ratio because book values are always changing. Whitney says that she can fix the banks' problems and that nationalizing them is not the answer. She thinks that the government should help smaller banks and not the larger ones. On the other hand, the government is helping large banks in acquiring smaller banks. According to her, if banks return to profitability, it will only be because of accounting tricks.

The financial crunch of 2007 was a global crisis, as foreign trade decreased. The dollar and yen currencies rose and oil prices declined. International financial organizations had to help developing countries. In the USA, risk increased and unemployment rose. Meredith Whitney opines that the present recession will last, at least until the end of 2010, because consumer spending will not go up any time soon. The consumer spending may in fact go down. This is because credit lenders are not allowed to increase interest rate if consumers do not pay their dues on time.

It may be said that Whitney has made great strides in a short period of time. That is the reason that she made the Forbes' list of 'The Best Analysts: Stock Pickers', in addition to being included in the New York Post's '50 Most Powerful Women in New York City'. She was also ranked in Fortune 500's '50 Most Powerful Women in Business', and won CNBC's 'Power Player of the Year'. She was also in Crain's magazine 'New York's 40 Rising Stars - under 40' and Time 100's 'World's Most Influential People'.

She got married to the former WWE wrestler, John Layfield, on February 13, 2005, in Key West, Florida. Just like his wife, Layfield also works in the financial analysis field.

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