Saturday, November 3, 2007

Sobering Thoughts

This is like shooting fish in a barrel. First to roll was O'Neal at Merrill. He choked up the largest quarterly loss in company history -- a $7.9 billion write-down in CDOs and subprime mortgages -- after "Scorched-Earth" Stan had announced it would be a paltry $4.5 billion. Do you think they could use a few competent financial analysts over there?

Now it's Chuck Prince over at Citigroup. Another chump CEO. He can't wait to get out -- he's offering to fall on his sword at an emergency board meeting on Sunday.

Next in the queue: James Cayne over at Bear Stearns.

Where are the hordes with pitchforks and torches who were incensed over options backdating -- a scandal which now looks like penny-ante poker in the boys room?

And here's some pay for performance: The O'Neals and Princes will take the severance packages. Nope, they never turn down the parting gifts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They thought they could play the Enron game. . . outrageous risks and trying to make money using funny money.