Meredith Whitney Predicts 80,000 Financial Services Layoffs

On Wall Street, it's beginning to look a lot like 2008.

Last week, Bank of America announced that it would be cutting 5 percent of its capital markets workforce. This week, the hedge fund DE Shaw said it would be laying off 10 percent of its entire staff. And today, Meredith Whitney, reknowned Wall Street analyst and head of her eponymous advisory firm, says (with the quantitative data to back it up) that by the end of the first quarter of 2011, 80,000 financial services jobs will have been cut--and that's just in the United States.

In an interview with CNBC (below), upon the release of her latest (and, from the sound of it, in-depth) report on the state of the U.S. economy, Whitney also says that due to "horrible" Wall Street revenues, bonuses at investment banks this year will be "really really bad," sending some bankers to the exits as they'll be telling themselves it just ain't worth it anymore more. In addition, Whitney notes that if you own any regional bank stock you best ditch that junk now ("absolutely sell regional banks") and that the fourth quarter for banks will be painful.

But the crux of Whitney's report has to do with the states, not the banks. In so many words, she says that Michigan and California are set to be the new Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.