Wall Street has its own oracle in Meredith Whitney. Acutlly what she predicted seems so obvious in retrospect  but the so called wall street experts either missed it all together or did not have the courage to call it.

It all started back on Oct. 31, 2007, when she published her now-legendary report on Citigroup Inc. In it, she pointed out that the company’s dividend now exceeded its profits. The bank was handing money back to its investors faster than it was taking it in from its customers.

The U.S.’s biggest bank was being managed to ensure only its bankruptcy. Citigroup would need either to raise capital, sell assets or slash its dividend — possibly all three.

Whitney now says “that call was absolutely straightforward, the easiest call I’ve ever made.” But at the time, none of her fellow analysts was saying anything like it.

The words of one woman were enough to knock fragile stock markets into a freefall not seen since the advent of the sub-prime crisis in August, after a pessimistic report on Citigroup’s future sparked a chain reaction of panic selling.

Meredith Whitney’s dire predictions shook the financial giant to the core and brought death threats. But Wall Street seems to think she got it right

Meredith Whitney, an obscure and little-noticed analyst of Wall Street banks, working for an obscure and little-noticed Wall Street bank (Oppenheimer & Co.), has become, in a matter of months, a woman who moves markets.

Her point about the ratings companies is one example; another is her argument that Wall Street firms will drift to their tangible book value — or what you’d get for them if you sold them off, position by position. Several (Citigroup is still the prime example) still have huge amounts of goodwill built into their share price. Goodwill, Whitney argues, will vanish.

It remains to be seen whether her predictions about Citi’s dividend and capital structure will be vindicated. But so far, in the words of one senior investment banker, “the stock market is betting on her being right.”