Ooopsie

Bloomberg (10.24.07):

"Merrill Lynch & Co. reported its first quarterly loss in six years after a larger-than-forecast $7.9 billion of writedowns for subprime mortgages and asset- backed bonds, the most by any Wall Street firm."

Merrill Lynch Reports Loss on $7.9 Billion Writedown

Noting that the charge "is the biggest in the firm's 93-year history", Bloomberg comes in with an elbow to Stanley's noggin: "Merrill's failure to meet its own projection shows how Chief Executive Officer Stanley O'Neal misjudged the severity of the decline in the credit markets since July, after late mortgage payments from borrowers with poor credit histories surged."

And a knee to the gut: "'It sends a very poor message to the marketplace that Merrill doesn't have a good handle on their risk,' said William Fitzpatrick, a financial-services analyst at Johnson Asset Management in Racine, Wisconsin, which oversees $1.7 billion and doesn't own Merrill shares."

It gets worse from there.

Racine, as we all know, is home to that delightful Danish pastry known as the kringle.