Citigroup
Phew.
But where have we heard this before?
Maybe it was November 2007, when a Citigroup analyst said Morgan Stanley's
Maybe it was December 2007, when AIG
Or in late 2007, when an analyst bullish on Bank of America
Perhaps it was July 2008, when then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said of the weakening banking sector: "This is a very manageable situation."
And so on.
All of these quotes were made by people with more information, better research, and deeper clarity into a bank's books than any individual investor can dream of. For investors, the biggest risk with bank stocks isn't that they'll underappreciate the complexity of the company's balance sheet. It's that the people running the show do, too.