Postcards

Most Powerful Women take New York

"Betting on the Future." That's the 2009 theme of Fortune's Most Powerful Women, who convened in New York City last evening for a mega-celebration and some very smart conversation. I'm not sure I belong on stage with three superstars under 40: Bank analyst Meredith Whitney, Google's (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, and Goldman Sachs' (GS) Dina Powell. But there I was (at age 49), talking with them them about how they've navigated MORE

Global women leaders on video

Meredith Whitney, the influential bank-industry analyst, gathered a dozen women leaders from across the developing world for breakfast yesterday. I wrote yesterday's Postcard about their "View of the World."  The global economic outlook from Whitney's and these women isn't real pretty.

We asked our friends at CNNMoney.com to videotape the conversation and interview these women, who are participants in the Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. This year, Whitney MORE

Meredith Whitney's View of the World

When Meredith Whitney, the Cassandra-like analyst of the financial-services industry, gathers a dozen rising-star women from across the developing world, you don't get small talk. You don't get happy talk either. "A View of the World" -- the topic of a breakfast she hosted today at Manhattan's Core Club -- turned out to be a not-so-pretty picture.

I was there because the international women whom Whitney convened are all participants in MORE

Scenes from the Time 100 bash

I'm just back from a funeral in Pennsylvania -- where I traveled late last night after the Time 100 gala at Manhattan's Time Warner Center. Strange to say, but two wonderful celebrations back to back. The funeral was for my closest childhood friend Meg's father, Jack Denuel, who died after a three-decade battle with MS. He was a great man who never whined and never said a bad word about anyone. Never.

As MORE

Meredith Whitney on credit, Buffett, and paper routes

Bank-industry analyst Meredith Whitney, one of FORTUNE's Most Powerful Women and the subject of our cover story last summer, is all over the place this week. An op-ed, "Credit Cards are the Next Credit Crunch," in today's Wall Street Journal presents a dreadful outlook for consumer spending. She says that she's upped her estimate for how much banks will yank credit lines to consumers--by $2 trillion this year and a MORE

Power Point: It can always get worse

"The biggest lessons from the downturn have been that no matter how bad a position can get, it can get a lot worse. And never be too big in anything."

-- Bank analyst Meredith Whitney in an email to investors. In the note she recaps what she learned during a lunch this week with Goldman Sachs' (GS) president Gary Cohn and CFO David Viniar. Goldman has stayed strong, relatively, as rivals MORE

Most Powerful Women answer Obama's call

On Friday, I left you with a promise: that I'd find something new and proactive to do to answer President Obama's call to "responsibility"--which seems to be the buzzword of his Administration.

I found my "to do" this weekend--but before I tell you what I decided on, let me share briefly what I spent yesterday working on. Carrie Welch, my onetime Fortune colleague and former Most Powerful Women Summit co-chair, and MORE

Bank world's biggest critic busts out

Another most powerful woman escapes. Well, we used to say "drop out," but these days the parade of powerful people - men and women leaving big corporate jobs - is the greatest exodus we've ever seen.

The latest is Meredith Whitney, the influential bank-industry analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., who announced yesterday that she would leave the firm to start her own advisory business.

Her power perch is already unusual. She's the MORE

Meredith Whitney gathers the power

I was with 25 powerful women and one man last evening. We agreed: The worst is yet to come, but if something good comes out of these crises, it might be because we're all questioning our higher calling.

The setting was the Manhattan home of Meredith Whitney, the Oppenheimer bank-industry analyst whose early calls on Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC), among other teetering giants, earned her a Fortune cover MORE

Buffett and beyond: Most Powerful Women on video

Here on Postcards, you'll find a trove of video segments from last week's Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit. Click here to watch a riveting take on the fall of Lehman Brothers by Barbara Byrne, a vice chairman who spent 28 years at the now-bankrupt firm. Today, since Barclays bought Lehman's North American core, Byrne is a vice chairman at Barclays Capital (BCS).

We also just posted the first of several highlights MORE