CNBC gold: Thain deserved $10 million bonus

I caught a glimpse of this while running around in London the last few days and wasn't able to comment until now. You may remember the crazy, yet typical Wall Street, request from Merrill Lynch CEO for a bonus. (This of course would be above and beyond the $200 million payout that Thain and small team are rumored to receive thanks to selling the company to Bank of America.) After Andrew Cuomo joined the discussion, the request suddenly disappeared. One CNBC was having none of it though and wrote a strong letter of support for the $10 million bonus.

The editor starts the process by taking a page out of the Phil Gramm book, calling everyone who disagrees "whiners." That was a nice touch and glad to see him fully embrace the fool who led us down this economic path. Well done. It includes all of the usual smears against anyone who has the nerve to demand reward for quality, because that's obviously asking for too much. These guys take on so much risk to earn hundreds of millions, so they should be rewarded win or lose as we've witnessed with the likes of O'Neal and Charles Prince.

The money line is when CNBC argues in favor of the bonus because Merrill Lynch stock of up 5% since September. OK, but what about the twelve month high compared to the current numbers? Merrill Lynch is DOWN almost 80% from its twelve month high, so for that, this brain trust thinks Thain should be rewarded. It's no wonder why the rest of the country (and much of the world who knows about the crisis) detests this bunch of frauds, both CNBC and Wall Street.