Well it took awhile, but the collective wisdom has finally turned its attention away from the Stanley O'Neal crucification process. Other companies are starting to do last-acknowledge losses and reprice portfolios- what Merrill and its CEO did first.
One was beginning to wonder about people's internals, as though isolating O'Neal as the worst CEO in the universe might somehow protect them from the fact that nearly everyone messed up, miscalculated, or mispriced, and that a blizzard of economic craziness is on its way.
This week we are graced with the retirement of one Charles Prince, who peeped not a peep while O' Neal was tarred blacker than black for having created Merrill's quarterly loss of about $2.5 billion. Now Citi has come forward, estimating writedowns and losses that match or exceed Merrill's, to date. Somewhere someone is doing a happy dance, while tossing $160 million dollars in the air, misery loving company.
Today the Wall Street Journal in their "Heard on the Street" column suggests that analysts are now coming to the conclusion that Merrill's write downs were not such an anomally after all. No kidding.
So now it's not O'Neal singular wrongness, it's the pricing models? He can come out of the corner with the dunce cap on, or, at least, be joined in that corner by a broad swathe of the financial industry as the days and weeks pass.
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