Meredith Whitney Quotes

Keep a strong balance sheet, don't get over-leveraged, and try to protect the security of your employees.

For a number of major companies, if you can't access the commercial markets, you can't fund your business. That's a big problem. You can't pay your bills.

We need the banks to be attractive to investors again.

We don't want to give a business that is not going to come through the troubled waters a loan that they can't pay back.

Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.

I think Salesforce, going public very early on before they were profitable, it made a lot of sense for them because it got customers comfortable that these guys were going to have capital and be transparent about their business.

Most companies can survive even if their debt ratings are lowered below investment grade, although they will have higher borrowing costs.

You can make great money in a utility type of business by borrowing cheaply and lending sensibly but that's not what's being done.

Credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.

Banking should be boring..

If I had challenges in my company, I would not hesitate to sell assets to remain afloat, to get to the better times, because it doesn't make any sense for me to keep any assets and then suffocate the whole organization.

Cash in must exceed cash out.

The most important word in the world of money is cash flow. The second most important word is leverage.

In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors.

I called my business manager in California and said, 'Sell all of my stock' - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.

I certainly think you could look at the business side of how WWE was run, which was as a conservative company with little debt and strong cash balance.

You can't look at the intrinsic value of gold as you can a business. Gold doesn't give you cash flow, and, at the end of the day, cash flow is what is important. Gold doesn't give you dividends.

I worked for twenty-some years with no capital, so I never had any liquidity. Managing my loans alone wouldn't do it, and working hard twenty-four hours a day seven days a week alone wouldn't do it. You have to be properly capitalized.

I'm satisfied it's very black, meaning 'in the black'.

Our liquidity is fine. As a matter of fact, it's better than fine. It's strong.

My business life is really simple. It's like, get check. Put check in bank. Pay rent. I've never bought a stock in my life. I never got caught up in that trip. And the truth is, I don't obsess about money ever.

However, the economics of our business continued to deteriorate. We barely escaped bankruptcy a year ago, and in the aftermath of that escape we had to make some even tougher decisions.

The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.

I want the last cheque I write to bounce.

I can tell you that when you're counting every penny, knowing that you are a single bad decision away from bankruptcy, you inevitably lose focus on what really matters for your business.