Cramer Attacks John Thain of Merrill Lynch (MER, NYX)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Thain_image_2Cramer_picOn CNBC’s MAD MONEY tonight, Jim Cramer came out and added the Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) CEOJohn Thain to his "Wall of Shame" full of CEO’s that he wants to see go away. 

He noted that the problems of Thain go all the way back to when Thain was CEO of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: NYX) for lying to him then about making up market share losses to NASDAQ.

Tonight Cramer called Thain’s Merrill Lynch tenure as essentially oneof misleading information.  This is based upon saying that the firmdidn’t need dilution, wouldn’t do any dilutive financing, was hedgedagainst much risk, had CDO exposure under control, and more.

Last night we echoed some of the same after noting the Merrill Lynchcall of "We need no cash! We need cash!" after this $8.5 Billion 20%dilution financing. 

We used to dislike much of Thain’s policiesourselves, except that it was more around his policies of keeping theexchanges open a full day rather than a half-day in front of holidays(despite thinking he’s a belt and suspenders guy).

Here was our own list of CEO’s that need to go for 2008 from earlier this year showing how many have gotten the boot.

Jon C. Ogg
July 29, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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