Street growing ever more bearish on Citigroup

The view that Citigroup is in for a pathetic 1Q continues to grow. Meredith Whitney, hardly shy about bearish comments, has cut the bank's earnings estimates all the way to 75 cents from $2.70. Even as analysts fret about 1Q earnings at Goldman Sachs, analysts for that company just issued a fresh estimate of Citigroup writedowns--a whopping $12 billion for Citigroup. The next largest prediction is $4 billion for Merrill Lynch. The big issue is that the need to write off bad credits at Citigroup and others has spread beyond subprime-related assets. In this quarter, the pain will be felt across subprime, Alt-A, prime and a host of commercial-backed securities. The focus immediately will shift to the second quarter. Few think the meltdown has ended.

For more:
- here's an article from MarketWatch
- here's a brief about Whitney

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Citigroup to begin layoffs, stock attractive? Article
Meredith Whitney still swinging at Citigroup. Article