Postcards

Meredith Whitney says unemployment will rise again

by Patricia Sellers

So, retail sales are up. Unemployment is down. And the Dow is near 11,000.

That doesn't mean that all is right with the world.

So says Meredith Whitney.

The analyst who brought down the bank stocks in 2007--by shining the light on their capital shortfalls--came by Fortune's offices Wednesday afternoon to explain why she's still a bear. I asked her: Will unemployment, now at 9.7%, likely go back up? "I think MORE

Women and finance: a hot market to tap?

Venture capitalist Theresia Ranzetta, who wrote Tuesday's Guest Post about how Silicon Valley can best enable entrepreneurs, did some serious enabling herself this week.

Her firm, Accel Partners, announced a $4.5 million investment in LearnVest, a start-up aimed at women who control household purse strings but are fairly flummoxed by the challenge.

It's apparently a big market. "Seventy million 18- to 50-year-olds--women--control 80% of household financial decisions, and no one is targeting MORE

Lehman ex-CFO Callan under new scrutiny

by Patricia Sellers

"The fall of a Wall Street highflier," in the latest issue of Fortune, portrays Erin Callan as a star banker at Lehman Brothers who is catapulted to CFO, finds herself in a maelstrom, and flames out--all the while maintaining a fierce determination to perform for her bosses.

Ever since Lehman (BCS) died in September 2008, one key question has been: Was Callan so eager to please CEO Dick MORE

Hank Paulson's next big gig

I delved into On the Brink last evening. That's the new memoir by Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary, about trying to save the world--or at least the global financial system--when Bear Stearns (JPM) and Lehman  Brothers (BCS) and AIG (AIG) were collapsing around him.

The hell, the fear, the physical illness he felt are long past. When I spoke with Paulson on Friday, he seemed mightily relieved about that--and that MORE

Are we ready for good-time CEOs?

by Patricia Sellers

Have we really hit bottom? Sandra Horbach, who heads the consumer and retail group at private equity giant Carlyle Group, says we have.

Horbach and I chatted on stage this morning at the Women's Alternative Investment Summit down on Wall Street. "Trailblazers Discuss the State of the Market," the organizers called our session, suggesting that we both have survived cycles and seen a lot. Yes, we have. Horbach, MORE

Drexel CEO Fred Joseph, R.I.P.

"Investment banking is funny. You do one transaction, then you do another of the same type and then a third. Maybe then you've got a business. Do ten, and it is a business."

- Fred Joseph, former CEO of Drexel Burnham Lambert, who died of multiple myeloma, at 72 on Friday. Given the junk-bond boss's status in the Business Hall of Shame, you might think Joseph would earn a harshly critical MORE

A pair of Dimons at JPMorgan Chase

by Patricia Sellers

Ted Dimon Sr. started a new job yesterday.

Not just any job. Formerly a broker at Merrill Lynch, Dimon joined the brokerage unit of JPMorgan Chase (JPM). His son happens to be CEO of the parent company.

Word is, Jamie Dimon steered clear of the deal to hire his 78-year-old dad, who arrived with five other Merrill brokers in tow. According to people close to father and son, Ted MORE

Morgan Stanley's Mack speaks about survival

My Fortune colleague Carol Loomis passed on this YouTube video of a talk that Morgan Stanley (MS) CEO John Mack delivered last week at Wharton. It's a remarkably candid play-by-play of living through the global economic meltdown.

Mack talks about being pushed by Tim Geithner, then head of the New York Fed, to do a deal with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) or Citigroup (C) or another partner that might stabilize the teetering MORE

Citi's top cop: The art of boxing in high heels

I know lots of executives in the banking industry, but I had never heard of Cindy Armine. Until, that is, a couple of months ago when I had lunch with Armine, who is the chief compliance officer at Citigroup (C). Several things blew me away: her humble beginnings (she didn't go to college), her amazing trajectory (from clerk to top cop), her candor about her flaws as a manager--and MORE

Lloyd Blankfein, Treasury Secretary?

by Patricia Sellers

Lloyd Blankfein hasn't loved buddying up to Washington this past year. After accepting--and repaying--$10 billion in TARP funds to help rescue the global financial system, the Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO has had to raise his presence in D.C., as well as in the press, to defend the firm's record profits and opulent pay. "We went from a bankrupt model to 'too big to fail,'" said Blankfein, referring to MORE