Meredith Whitney: No Amount of Government "Mitigation" Will FIx Housing

Meredith Whitney, the analyst from Oppenheimer whose predictions have been amazingly prescient during this crisis, said this morning that all the government bailouts for the housing and mortgage industry have proven instead to be "throwing good money after bad". She said she knows of nothing the Fed or Treasury can do that will fix the problem, and that the real estate market correction will continue regardless of what the government does. Default rates continue to rise, even following renegotiated mortgage contracts. She also predicted that consumer credit is being cut back sharply by banks, and that credit card debt will be the next shoe to fall. She said the government should pour its resources into trying to shore up this next crisis instead of continuing to pour money into mortgages and real estate.