Cold Water For Us

Noted analyst Meredith Whitney believes unemployment will reach double digits.Bank revenue will be down by up to seven percent.There will be a protracted period of negative operating leverage.We're going back to a 2001-2002 revenue environment.Estimates for the big banks are coming down.We're in for a rude awakening,resulting in a slow grind-down for these stocks,Ms.Whitney warned.

A Joint Response

Money Center banks have pooled their resources to ease the financial crisis.An international consortium of 10 of the big banks,including Citigroup(C),Barclays(BCS),Credit Suisse(CS) and Deutsche Bank(DB), have each put seven billion dollars U.S. into the fund.Any of them are allowed to borrow up to a third of the 70 billion to shore up their balance sheets and avoid ratings downgrades.