There's something about the image of John Thain sitting on a $35,000 toilet that won't go away.
It began with a report by CNBC that the former Merrill Lynch (BAC) boss, facing the demise of his firm, blew $1.22 million redecorating his office.
Contributing to this obscene tab was "something called a "commode on legs,'" CNBC reported, based on the details it had at the time.
As other media outlets began to swirl about the story, this minor detail was shortened to "$35,000 for a commode" in a list of outrages that included $1,400 for a trash can, $68,000 for a credenza, $87,000 for a rug and $800,000 for a celebrity designer.
After that, many reporters and bloggers mistakenly took out their plungers.
"During his $1.22 million office renovation, ex-Merrill Lynch boss John Thain reportedly bought a portable toilet at a cost of $35,000," the Chicago Tribune quipped in a Jan. 23 column about popular Internet searches of the week. "No doubt a metaphor for where such purchases have taken our economy."
"Not only did John Thain flush Merrill Lynch shareholders down the drain, and not only did he oversee $100 billion of losses, we now find out that the most overpaid and over-compensated CEO in America now spent $35,000 on a toilet," read blog Wall Street Manna, in a Jan. 22 post.
"Let's face it, a (bleep-bleep) that big needs a $35,000 toilet," read another piece at www.alternet.org, called "John Thain: Corporate Jerk of the Moment."
Subsequent media reports concluded that there is more than one definition for "commode," including, "a low cabinet or chest of drawers .. usually standing on legs or short feet," according to thefreedictionary.com.
But in every carnival of greed we love to see sideshows.
Like the anonymous trust-fund kids who took credit for toilet-papering alleged Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff's $9 million Palm Beach home last weekend.
Like Dick Fuld, former boss of bankrupt Lehman Brothers, who recently sold his $14 million seaside mansion in Florida to his wife for $100.
Like Citigroup (C)planning to buy a $50 million corporate jet, even as it bagged billions in government bailouts.
Like insurance giant AIG(AIG) getting bailout money, but still paying for pricey hunting trips and sending independent insurance agents to a posh resort.
Pundits often use these examples to allege that there is a disconnect between the super rich and the rest of us. But greed is just a part of the human condition. And anyone climbing the socio-economic ladder is looking up, rarely noticing the rungs below.
This is why middle-class folks can still buy shirts for $18 and never even know about the young laborers who sewed them together for just enough pennies to buy rice.
And it's also how Wall Street executives can insulate themselves from the middle-class lugs whose retirement funds they've been pinching to keep their jets in the air.
Sometimes, when such oversights are called to their attention by raging mobs, they repent.
Citigroup is backing out of its jet deal after a little chiding from President Obama. AIG has long apologized and promised to be more conscious of the fact that it's funded by taxpayers.
But Fuld hasn't explained his fire-sale. And Thain's apology -- though it came with a pledge to personally reimburse his lavish office expenses -- was pretty much a "Sorry, but ..."
"It is clear to me in today's world that it was a mistake," he said in a CNBC interview. But then he proceeded to blame the decorating choices of his predecessor, the overpaid and then ousted Stan O'Neal.
"It really would have been very difficult for me to use it in the form that it was in," Thain said. "It needed to be renovated no matter what."
And there was no $35,000 toilet.
Nevertheless, Thain risks installation in the same filthy bathroom where we've collectively hung the $6,000 shower curtain of former Tyco International CEO Dennis Koslowski.
Because it's a lot easier to imagine Thain on a throne than to fathom the fortunes he made turning a 94-year-old powerhouse into something resembling an outhouse.
Or that in his firm's final days, he rushed $4 billion in bonuses to Merrill's merry managers for their parts in this feat.
Or that the global economy is collapsing because the paper that Wall Street firms sold us may soon be worth less than a jumbo pack of Charmin.
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. The column is published each Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. ET. He can be reached at 201-938-5266 or by email at al.lewis@dowjones.com.)
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