Off-the-Wall Street, NYC - (Bankrupcy Mess): "Eight billion down the pan? That's nuthin' compared to Ken Lay's $60 billion Enron losses and George W Bush's $3 trillion Iraq war hubris," beleaguered Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal quipped today amid news of him getting the company's Order of the Boot for the financial fiasco.
O'Neal has been reported as being on the brink of resignation for leading the world's largest brokerage down the swannee to its biggest ever quarterly loss.
"I ain't gonna talk around the fact that the company's bombed," O'Neal said today, "and there might have been some mistakes made.
O'Neal, 56, says a company witchhunt authorised a corporate lynch-mob to go after his scalp following Wednesday's announcement of a $2.24 billion loss on big bets related to mortgage-backed securities that rendered Merill's sub-prime business virtually worthless.
"Sure I tried to save my ass by initiating a possible merger with Wachovia Corporation. And there were some unavoidable expenses. Industry standard.
"But hell, getting screwed over for a mere eight billion dollars? What about my severance bonus?"
Meanwhile the Merrill Lynch board is remaining tight-lipped about a rumored $32 billion balance sheet on overall group trading this year.
"The company's undergone a kind of psychotic episode in its trading practices," one Wall Street analyst said today.
"That $32 billion position in collateralized debt obligations might just be a sort of high-rolling delusional fallout from contamination to Bush war expenditure toxocity."
