Famed analyst Meredith Whitney has ended a self-imposed exile from a finance world that she said had become "like watching paint dry." In an appearance Tuesday morning on CNBC, she said she is back writing market and economic commentary and focused on a real estate market that she said has the potential to hold strong for at least several more years.
On Halloween in 2007, Whitney, working then as an Oppenheimer analyst, released research suggesting that Citigroup would need to write down its portfolio of subprime mortgage loans and had paid dividends that were greater than its profits. Hailed as a Wall Street star then, the glow would soon fade. Her high-profile and much-pilloried call in late 2010 of looming defaults in municipal bonds failed to materialize but did spark a brief wave of selling in the fixed income market.