9/11, watch what happened as it happened. any time. it is washington your way. >> this week on q & a. our guest is meredith whitney. financial analyst. . .

i wanted to talk to him when he called and i was open with him because whatever you tell him, you can tell him a story and he will tell you the story back. you'll learn something from his story. he is amazing. i am surprised. i never thought of myself as an

obscure analyst at an obscure firm. prior to that time, people did not care about financials. i was obscure in the world of financial, but financials were not on anybody's radar screen. certainly, risk perspective, banks were never associated with high risk. >> let me let michael lewis say it in his words when we talked to him about his book. >> she was what is called a soft side analyst. she works for a wall street firm that offers stocks to the public. she worked for a firm called oppenheimer. she was a bank analyst. a financial sector analyst. meredith whitney, who i never heard of started saying things

in late 2007 when i first started paying attention about the wall street firms. it was different from anything that i had ever heard. she said they did not understand the risks they were taking. they did not understand their own balance sheets. she predicted that citigroup would have to cut or eliminate its dividend a week before they actually do. she seems to know more about what is going on inside places than the people that run them. it is almost her tone that was interesting. she was actually condescending to these wall street people. i called her up. she was making a different sound. i was writing about this world, but i was curious about who this woman was and why she thinks this. she persuaded me early on that , as i put it, the wall street firms have become the dumb money at the poker table. somehow, these firms that used to be the smart money, the last thing you wanted to do is be on

the other side of solomon brothers trades. there was some 0-sum death. you weren't going to make money. what had happened is that somehow the firms had turned stupid. they became the dumb money. that made me curious. something had changed. the question was, if they were the dumb money, who was the smart money? >> he said that you led him to steven eisman. who is he and why was that important to his story? >> i think that his task was going to be different from wha it turned out to be. we started speaking in march of 2008. his perspective was fresh and he just wanted to learn.

it was not until september, 2008 mentioned during conversation. he asked me about investors that were involved in buying the brokers and investing in brokers and had now become demoralized by the spirit of the brokers and would never invest in brokers again. there was this group that was investing in brokerage companies, but there was also a group that invested in a different type of game. i told him he should meet my mentor, stephen eisman. he is really well depicted in the book. a character, love him or hate him. i happen to love him. he is smart and the hits keep coming. when i worked for steve, we wrote on the fall of glass

stiegel and the industry. i learned how to do this, his craft. we hit every single turn and looked at financials from a point of history from a cultural angle. that got you into layers of the financial system that you would have missed otherwise if you had just looked at bank stocks. people that did not connect the dots missed the entire collapse of the system. people who connect the dots were the ones that got it. for the ones that got it, it was an unorthodox way of approaching the system. it is not that steve is really smart, because michael knows a lot of smart people, but if i did not know steve, i would find it hard to believe what he wrote about on paper because the guy is different. >> you mentioned selling short. define that.

>> that is when you bet a company's stock price is going to go down. >> why would they allow that to happen? >> there is a market. there is a buyer and seller. there's a good reason that that trade exists, oftentimes the short sellers tend to see a weakness before anyone else does and ends up shining the light. it is the greatest disinfectant on an otherwise dubious company or story. >> as you know, i actually have analysis that was done by a law firm on the dodd/frank financial situation. i've read it, you keep fighting as generalist what it means. i wanted to go back to where you started in this business. how did you train yourself in the first place and why did you get into it? >> i was a history major in college. i went to brown university. in college, i studied what was

interesting. the berlin wall was crashing. i wanted to study german history. it was the linchpin to all of modern european history. when i graduated, i wanted to go to d.c. i worked on the hill and worked tirelessly until i went to college in politics. i wanted to go to the most competitive environment. the most competitive environment is d.c. new york is the most competitive industry for finance. i did not even know that research existed. once i discovered what research was, i really narrowed my search. i did not want to sell anyone else's product. i wanted to make my own product and sell my own product because that is what i trusted.

research ended up being a field of work were you get paid to learn. it is fascinating. the access to information is incredible. the harder that you work, the more you can do and the better work you can do and the farther you can advance. my first job in research was working for an oil and gas analyst who ended up firing me because he thought i was too aggressive and i wanted his job. i was 23 at the time he was in his 40's. getting fired by him was the best thing that could have happened to me. i began working for steve eisman. when i had my first job in oil and gas, people would say, "remember the energy crisis in the 1970s." i was in the back of my mom's station wagon. without any experience, it was a real detriment. getting into financials when i

did in the early 1990's was the perfect time because that was when the securitization market was really getting underway. that is when subprime was really getting underway. i was growing up with the industry growing up. i didn't miss anything. from an accounting standpoint, instead of a history major, you could learn on the job. anything that was going on, you just dug into and it was a level playing field. i really wanted to work. >> what did your mother and father do? >> my mother was an executive recruiter and my dad was in finance in different areas. but they did not have a lot to say in terms of me going into research. i am the youngest of three kids. i am pretty strong-headed. >> explain what a researcher does. >> a research analyst typically

is siloed into an industry. you cover the banking industry. you will rate a bank stock by sell or hold and you will have relative ratings and you will have three buys and three holds. you were just talking to investors and the investors would be the people that you give your money to that run 401 k plans and i am advising those fund managers. >> michael lewis referred to oppenheimer. it seems like i have heard of oppenheimer for years. is it still there? >> oppenheimer is a great old name. when i joined oppenheimer originally, it was a research

boutique and it was one of the best research boutiques. it was small, but things were small back then in the 1990s. they became cibc and then cibc sold them back to another retail operation. it is small and it is not what it once was. >> i have a list here somewhere of all of the things that happened to you after this prediction back in 2007. this is something called buzzle.com. >> never heard of it. >> they said that whitney made great strides in a short period of time. if that is the reason that she made the forbes list of the best analyst stock pickers in addition to being included in the new york post 50 most powerful women in business.

why do you have to be one of the 50 most powerful women? why can't you be one of the 50 most powerful people? >> i do not know. >> why do they still segregate men and women? >> fortune's most powerful women, i was glad to make the list. it is a great group of women. it is a great networking opportunity. women do not typically network. i do not know why. they focus on the task at hand. that opened a lot of doors to meeting incredible people. it is amazing to me that i look around when i go to conferences or when i have the events and i call it a man zone. there are a bunch of guys. it has been a great advantage for me.

i'm different. i do not care about how i look because i am the only one there. i do not have a lot of comparison. i will ask questions that other people will not ask. if people underestimate me, that works to my advantage, which happen as lot. i do not mind asking dumb questions. it is sad to say that there are so few women in finance. >> are they scared to mess with you because who you are married to? >> my husband is a retired world wrestling entertainment champion. he is 6'7", 250. he is a big guy. i really do not get messed with that often, maybe because -- >> i was really kidding.

talk about that. the other things that they say is that you are in the 100 most influential people. did this happen overnight? not your learning, but the awards you were given and the lists you were put on? >> it happened over a period of about 12 to 18 months. it seems that after a lot had already gone on, after the "time" 100 list, that was may 2008, or 2009,so much had gone on by then. i don't think about the lists that i'm on. it sounded like a great group of people to be around. how cool! i hope they do not figure out that i do not belong here.

i remember in the late 1990's, you could not follow financial stocks to save your life. people wanted telecom, the internet, there was zero interest in financials. the high point was over 20% of the s&p. it was not a sexy ticker. i think that is why it caught so many people off guard. when it hit, people were like who is this obscure analyst. i had been in the business for 15 years. people cared, and cared a lot. it didn't feel like work. i work all the time. i am always on to the next issue. i do not stay on one issue for too long. a good analyst would market their thesis over and over again. once i'm finished with a report, i'm on to the next one.

i had the research. from the city call when we roofed to the big call, the ring of fire, the rig laatory capital was determined by the ratings of the moody's s&p on securities. this is november 15 of 2007. that was a much bigger call. a month later, it was staggering the amount of work we were putting out. it happened right at the time that people cared. it was the perfect form. >> back to the enron situation. there was a short seller on a telephone call that started that whole process and here you are. who is citi and what happened to

it after you made your call? >> going back to enron, during my brief time as an oil and gas junior analyst, i actually knew what enron was. i did not know how complex the organization had gotten. i certainly knew how revered the company was. at the time, in 2001, everyone was worried about argentina defaulting. i wrote a note on a sunday, december 1, and said that it would be bigger than anything you can imagine. at the time, you could see who the creditors were. that was a big call. the citi call was one of the largest banks in the world. with over $2 trillion in assets. it had made so many acquisitions over the years that you could not really see what was coming or going with the company.

each quarter, they restated. when a company restates, it is hard to get a historical perspective on what is really happening because they would restate every line item and you do not know what your looking at. >> was sandy in charge at that time? >> no, chuck prince was in charge. sandy was in charge when they made the major deals. there were major deals between traveller, solomon, citibank and he was the architect behind a lot of that. >> was bob rubin there? >> yes. >> he was involved in advising barack obama. >> yes. in the summer of 2007, they had a new cfo who had come over from american express, who i had a

huge amount of respect for. that was before all of this. i remember listening to one analyst. i work in a complete nerd factory, dork factory. the nerdier you are, the cooler you are in my field. they said they had given up on modeling. that is predicting what they are going to earn. citi had got that too complex. at the time, i said you can't give up because that is your job

and that is what you get paid for. i tried to make citi as simple as possible. this is a huge deal for an analyst. you want everybody to like you. putting a sell on a company turns out to be dangerous. it is highly unpopular. >> why dangerous? >> people own the stock and you are telling people to sell it. people are losing money. you anger a lot of people. everybody likes you when you put a buy and they make more money. the day i put out this report, everybody was reading it. to go back to that time, they had just reported -- a few weeks after they reported their third quarter numbers, i looked at how much debt they had compared to the equity they had and i looked at the leverage compared to the other banks.

they needed to get to a tangible equity leverage ratio comparable to their peers. they would need to raise $30 billion and sell $100 billion in assets. they were not going to make enough money to pay their dividends. it was a three-pronged report. the report was seven pages. any generalist could have read the pages and understood exactly how simple the problems were. that is how present things. if i do not understand things, i will work until it is laid out in a way that an art teacher or a veterinarian can understand it. it is not that complicated. you have to have it explained to you in a way that is understandable. >> why were you the only analyst that figured this out?

>> i do not know. during that point until now, when i was getting a ton of attention, i became very concerned -- i became -- not only were more people interested, but people would start working harder. anyone could do what i was doing. why weren't they? when i wrote a report, i wanted to make sure that people knew i had written it first. information is everywhere. i was using information that anyone could get. it was as simple as could be. it was just a course of several conversations with the fdic.

anybody could have done that. i remember thinking, "why aren't other people doing this?" this was great for me, but it makes you wonder if you are crazy and if you are right. you have to be right on this. >> i want to show you a headline on the "wall street journal." this is a couple weeks ago. when i saw this, i thought of you. i want to ask you about regulation. when the new credit card law came into effect, the "wall street journal" said credit-card rates rise.

the last thing that you expected to see is a headline like that. how do you write legislation and the first day it goes into effect, everything goes up? >> this happened before the dodd/frank bill. this was part of the card act. it was designed to protect consumers. all the fine print that you cannot really read would explain to you that if you are over your limit, you get charged a fee. if you are late on your payment, you get charged a fee. they call those hidden fees. there were some really bad things that were going on. double cycle billing and excessive fees charged. the bad side of this is that they put into effect measures that prevented banks from repricing. a credit card loan, this is very interesting and important, a credit-card loan is an unsecured loan.

if you go bust on your credit card line, i have nothing to collect. that is it. what is important is i look at your monthly credit scores and your behavior on a monthly basis to assess the risk. if you are late on your phone bill, i am smiling because i am about to get to my funny line. if you are like on your phone bill or your electric bill i make a mental note of that. if you are late on your cable bill, that is the biggest red flag to lenders because men will pay their cable bill beyond any other bills. the lender knows that the person is in trouble or has a higher probability of going default.

i will put into mechanisms and i will do this on the fly. if i now want to reprice your loan and i see that you spent a lot of time in atlantic city gambling and i have seen you being delinquent on a bunch of bills, i have to give you 45 days notice to reprice. the lender will not make that loan. $1.50 trillion has been cut from the system. we are over $1.50 trillion. it was may 2008 and i had gotten so much grief from people who were so angry. the idea was that you cannot price for risk you will not extend the risk. they have to figure out a way to

make money. it becomes expensive. they charge excessive fees and raise the rates of current card holders. for the guys that get kicked out of the system, the less wealthy or poor people, it gets more expensive to be poor. now, the consequences of this is the growth in prepaid cards and payday lenders and that is a very expensive way of paying for things. >> what is your basic feeling about the bill that was passed, the financial-services bill that was passed in congress a couple of months ago? >> it is going to take a long time to figure out what the results are going to look like. the toughest part of the bill was given a much longer runway timetable. in some respects, many years to implement.

i think it is very complicated. i think they tried to put a lot of basic outlines together and let committees work it out. so, we will see. it is changing on the fly. the durbin bill that passed at the last minute, it came out of nowhere. it pressures the payment companies. it was heavily political. i take it as an outline. >> i have a document that was prepared by david huntington who was a partner in a company. it was published on the harvard law school forum. i figured it was somewhat credible. i do not want to bore the

audience, but i want to see if you've interpreted it. the act introduces significant direct regulation of over-the-counter derivatives transactions. among the most notable provisions affecting the otc derivatives markets are clearing and trading. the act authorizes the cftc and the sec to mandate central clearing of otc derivatives that are determined to be appropriate for clearing and capable of being cleared. does that sound like something that is when to work? >> i think that will work. the more that you can put in a transparent clearing system, the better. when you wanted to get a stock price just by looking at a

ticker 25 years ago, you would have to call a stockbroker. today, you can pull it up on a computer screen. you can't do that for a bond. the bond market and the credit markets need to move towards that. more and more will move towards open exchange. that is so much better for the consumer. there should be transparency. someone is offering and what someone is willing to sell, with transparency, you would narrow the spread. that is better for the system. >> when you say bonds, what is the difference between a bond and a stock? >> a bond will typically be a collateral holding.

if a company goes bust, the equity shareholders are wiped out but the bond owns the collateral of the company. you will know you are getting a 5% coupon for a stated period. it is a company borrowing and you are financing the borrowing of the company. a stock is the equity of the company. your sharing on the upside. it is a higher risk vehicle and a bond is a lower risk vehicle. equities are more transparent than bonds. it is kind of crazy. >> how did she learn that? when did you learn that? >> i think most people know the difference between a stock and bond. >> you went to work as an analyst. when did you start learning the language?

how do you recommend somebody who is totally confused by all of this to learn it? >> first of all, start with something that really interests you. say that you're dying to go to spain. figure out what you want out of the equation, first and then get there. there is nothing about finance that is rocket science. you think about ponzi schemes, the biggest ponzi scheme for wall street is telling someone who has worked really hard to earn a dollar and they are not smart enough to know how that dollar is for to be invested. it is utter nonsense. figure out what interests you. if you are an avid sportsman,

find out what area of that you can invest in. it is very interesting. there are stories with all of this. if you do your homework, you can be just as smart as anyone. for crying out loud, i was a history major. >> michael said that you led him to steve eisman. what was he doing at the time? >> steve eisman is a lawyer by training. he reads really well. he would take the new york book review which is 300 pages and read it during lunch and remember everything. he is a prolific reader.

read everything. you never know where you're going to get ideas from. there was no rock unturned. he followed things he thought were genuinely interesting. i will give you an example that is not mentioned in "the big short." this was in 1996. banks which were only allowed to have 10% or below of their revenues come from the capital markets business. that would be a to raise up to 25%.

we initiated coverage for the banks. i was a junior analyst working the phones. i would work until the cows come home. i would call d.c. until someone answered the phone. the head of the congressional banking committee would take my calls. i found out later, he did that because i was the only girl that was calling him. >> it worked for you. >> there is information all over the place. we can up with this report and people poo-pooed it. there was massive competition between all the banks. there was consolidation between

the banks. that is just one of the things of going for it. taking an idea and all of these convictions and being so out of favor and so out of consensus, and then being right. the thrill of being right is the single aphrodisiac of this business. it's nothing else. it is being right and standing on your principles. on the flip side, we came out with coverage. thirty companies, sub prime companies went public. virtually none of left. they went bust. a really interesting time, there's a murder involved, alleged. we came out telling investors to sell short the shares of these sub prime companies.

the time of the report coincided when one of these companies was trying to raise money, a bear stearns deal. we end up disrupting the deal, and causing the company to have to pay 300 basis points, i think double what they would have had to pay prior to our report. steve got a letter on letterhead stationery from a broker at bear stearns that said steve, you're a blanking idiot, y-o-u.-r. we were thinking we're going to get death threats.

we were i think feeling like it was ok to be in the minority if you were right and you were ultimately going to be proved right. that wasn't scary to me. then the standard, which his standards were my aspirations, so that was so comfortable to me, and then, you know, you have to say integrity, but he's an ethical guy. i was so comfortable with that. it felt like i was -- steve is a very important person in my life, because he taught me, and he validated what i was interested in, and believed in me. for that, i'm forever grateful. host: when did you start your own company? host: in february, 2009. host: how did you start it? host: i funded it myself, and opened up the doors for business. >> give me and example of what you had to do, how many people worked there, how big are your

offices, where are you located and, who are your clients? >> i got paid on january 30. i got my bonus on january 30, started february 18. i went on vacation for a week, and then i had a couple of things to do in the office, so i -- how i started it. you of to lawyer up and form an l.l.c. i soft circled clients to say if i were going to do this, would you follow me? i tried, and i think made clients a lot of money, so people were willing to believe in me. we were cash flow positive in the second week. >> who were the kind of clients that you have? >> i have clients anywhere from mutual funds to hedge funds. people go long securities.

mack crow funds. at the time, we had some corporate clients. we started out in temporary offices, and it was an internal hallway. i could hear someone opening a candy bar in the office behind me. it was really close quarters. it looked like a fallout shelter, absolutely unglamorous. thes first person who visited was john stein, the second person ed lewis. it took us until june 1 to move into our current offices, about 4500 square feet, 57th street between fifth and sixth. we converted the old new york jet headquarters, beautiful,

beautiful offices, edgy, young, new, really cool. going back to in terms of how we have, i started the firm with four people. we have 14 now. i would have thought we would have a ton more. i think in the next three months, we'll be hiring probably 10. we're building a broker-dealer. we're careful about who we hire. everything that i didn't like about traditional wall street which was i hated the culture, people were not nice, and it's so easy to make people feel good about themselves. steve told me when i did a great job. he didn't have to tell me when i did a bad job, because i wore it. giving people feedback and being nice to each other and having respect. having an ice cream and cake party when it is someone's birthday sounds corny, but it

makes all the difference in the world. i have more resources now, so in terms of the coverage that we do, it's so much broader and better. >> the american people don't think much of wall street. do they have a reason to not think much of it? i haven't read much of the other prosecutor visions of this, but is any of this going to work? >> it's a step in the right direction. i think the attitudes have to change on wall street to really reintroduce a level of respect for your customer for the consumers, and to make it your business to empower consumers, and customers, as opposed to intimidate, and keep these guys in the dark, because it's like playing tennis. when you play with someone better than you, your game rises. when you have more intelligent informed clients and customers, you perform better. there's been a very dangerous,

unfair and clearly per i willous relationship between wall street and main street that came to a thunderous crash. that has to change. you have to equalize information bases, and it will work out better for everyone in the long run. >> sometime ago, you had a list of the seven most important people in the economy. i've got it here in my stack somewhere. i know one was tim geithner and barney frank. is that list the same today as it was? do you remember the list. >> that was a long time ago. >> i've got it here somewhere. >> it was nine or 10 months ago. it seems like an eternity. >> lets create a new list. who are the most important people in finance in the country? >> there is no doubt about it.

barney frank remains an extremely powerful force within finance. i would say one person that is not on the list that put himself on the list is al franken. who would have thought? the importance of sorting the rating agencies out, you cannot overstate it. >> why should we pay any attention to the rating after what we found out? >> you need rating agencies in the system. people need to have a guide post on where the risk lice. there are individual investors who need standardization of i know i am going to get paid this and assume risk for it.

rating agencies are fine in principle, they just have to run right and be done well. why would anyone pay for any type of ratings? you protect people and you make people money. every business should be that same way. the rating agencies have been a duopoly for 20, 30, 40 or 50 years. >> i found the list. still the same? where do you in this, by the time this runs, they may have made the decision on the head of the consumer agency. where are you on elizabeth warren. >> i think elizabeth warren, she is pulling together all her lobbying power to get this job. she is well respected. i think she could offer confidence back to that role.

she is very well liked, as well. a good communicator. i might take larry summers off of that list and replace him him with al franken. the white house was a big proponent of home affordability and modification program, but they left it to the treasury to execute. the treasury has been very, very active, more so than the white house. they have done a terrific job. there are hundreds of more banks to fail, but she is doing it in an orderly process and that is no small feat. you mentioned that you worked for jeff danesforth.

i bring it up but because, are you very political today? do you see the republicans or the democrats doing a better job? >> i am a registered independent. i have been every since i could vote. i have voted all over the aisle. i work for candidates. i'm not that interested in parties. pick your person. i think the states have a really impossible job with the fiscal crises. may the best man win. it is unfortunate that you have a stalemate in policy-making where we need a stimulus and we need to extend the tax cuts in every income category.

this economy has been cruising toward a double dip in a bad way. we have to do something about it. housing will surely take a double dip in the fourth quarter. you have to let that happen. you have to create structural reform. that is non-partisan. partisan politics is maddening right now. little costing our country a tremendous amount. if you alienate your audience, your audience will turn on you. politics has grossly underestimated the american people and that is dangerous. oversight council. >> financial stability oversight council. the fact that seeks to litigate several legislative and regulatory initiatives, the most substantial of which is a 10 voting member oversight council which will be chaired by the

secretary of the treasury, the chairman of the sec, the chairman of the fdic, one will any of those agencies be able to fulfill this goal? why is there another agency required in this process? >> isn't politics about creating committees that create other committees? no agency lack the power to prevent the crisis. they were not doing their jobs. you were lulled into a 15 year period of economic nirvana. people are asleep at the wheel. you can look at why banks had such a difficult time at the beginning of this crisis.

the collectors in the banks had never seen a bad loan. they didn't know thou collect. they had a recalibrate themselves. coming from somebody who doesn't want to be in politics, it is more red tape. it's certainly more expensive for people who require the minimums. it's going to require the banks holding more capital >> is that good or bad? >> that is good. this was designed to make sure that too big to fail was an issue. now it's enshrined too big to

fail. >> treatment of certain former bank holding companies. any company that was a bank holding company, having total consolidated assets of $50 billion or more as of january 1, 2010 and received financial assistance under or participated in the program established under the troubled asset relief program will be treated as a nonbank financial company supervised by the federal reserve. if they cease being a bank holding company -- what did i just say? >> people call that the hotel california provision. i call to fail attractio -- fatal attraction provision. those banks that sought shelter under the bank holding companies during tough economic times can all the sudden be free of

responsibility during better economic times. >> the act mandates to newly created financial stability oversight council to impose special assessments on the nation's -- >> antthe tax to prevent >> the 50 billion dollar figure is magic in this whole process. what is so special about $50 billion? >> the $50 billion is the top four commercial banks. it's the major recipients of tarp. it's very hard to be a small community bank at this point. over the last 20 years, so much of the lending in this country was consolidated to a national

level. it was controlled by the top six banks. the top six banks control over two-thirds of th credit card market. the little banks really became selected business models. if you in danger the little banks, the communities go under. the small bank lobby works like crazy to protect the community banks, so they cannot afford a special assessment. certain fdic insurance had to opt in and pay another assessment fee. the fees for small banks are becoming prohibitive to stay in business. they wanted to eliminate them and tax the guys that could afford it. it sounds like the consumer tax

policy. the never let the guys that took tarp forget that they took tarp. >> how does someone who deals in the integrity and truth in u -- end up marrying a guy that dealt in show business in the world wrestling entertainment? when i read his background, i just have to ask you about this. in late 1998, he was among the nation of domination to form the tag team of hell's henchman, managed by the jackal. after the jackal left, the wwf, they joined the undertakers' new ministry of darkness.

he dealt in show biz and a lot of people believe that that stuff is not rigged. >> as he would say, the story lines are scripted, and the physical activity is not rigged. he is banged up. >> why do they go through that? >> i do not know. i do not know. he had been a wrestling fan when he was a kid. he was a professional football player and he played for the raiders. he has been in contact sports for a really long time. he is a tough guy. despite the packaging, he is one of the nerdiest guys that i know. he has a photographic memory. his dad was a former bank c.e.o.

in texas. he is almost more interested in stocks that i am. i would never have expected to marry someone with that packaging, but i expected to marry somebody like that. he is 5000 times a better person than i am. if we read something, i will give it to him because he will remember all the details. we met when he was promoting a book. we were on a fox television program and it came to a point where you have to recommend a stock and this was august of 2003. the stock he recommended was citigroup. i turned to him and i had never watched wrestling before. i remembered that they were wrestling on saturday. i did not know him.

i asked why he suggested a financial in a rising rate environment. here is a guy that does not work in finance and i just gave him such a low blow. i do not know why i did it. i was not thinking. there was no surprise why i was single, clearly at the time. then we went to dinner next door and the group that we were on the television program with wanted to set us up, so they set us right next to each other. a year later, we got married. on that note, we are out of time. meredith whitney, of meredith whitney advisory group. thank you very much. >> thank you very much.

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