101 Dumbest Moments in Business

Ah, what a dumb year it was! Fortune chose the absolutely dumbest of the dumb that the gods of fate and humor delivered into our laps - and yours - this past year.

Merrill Lynch
4. Merrill Lynch
Mission accomplished!
In the first quarter of 2007, thanks to its $1.3 billion purchase of First Franklin Financial, Merrill Lynch becomes the world's top underwriter of subprime-mortgage-backed securities. Nonetheless, with the market in meltdown just a few months later, Merrill CFO Jeffrey Edwards (pictured) tells analysts that the firm's subprime exposure is "limited, contained, and appropriately marked." In October, Merrill announces a quarterly loss of $2.24 billion after $7.9 billion in subprime-related write-downs.
Last updated January 16 2008: 5:51 PM ET

Mattel

Eli Lilly

Leona Helmsley

Merrill Lynch

Stanley O'Neal

Chuck Prince

High-tech toilets

KFC/Taco Bell

French newspaper Le Monde

Electronic voting machines

Oil spills

Procter & Gamble

Disneyland

Naked Sunday

Bindeez

Microsoft's PR firm

Cocaine energy drink

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

New Jersey Superior Court

O.J. Simpson

Cartoon Network

Naming rights

Don Imus

Chris Albrecht

Adam "Pacman" Jones

Isiah Thomas

Phil Spector

Keith Richards

Swiss newspaper

James Cayne

Bear Stearns analysts

Jay-Z

Oral B

Summit Products

M&Ms

Best Buy

Judge Roy Pearson

Google

Damien Hirst

Comcast

National Amusements

Pfizer

The Toronto Blue Jays

Bank of America

Serendipity 3

Johnson & Johnson

John Mackey

The European Union

German screw factory

The Defense Department

Apple

Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome

Japanese arm-wrestlers

Research in Motion

Frank Gehry

Chrysler

Endemol Southern Star

Taco Bell

Radiohead

John Griffin

Sony

Nepal Airlines

Sony

Spain's National Institute of Statistics

Verizon Wireless

Rhode Island Hospital

McDonald's

Thomas the Tank Engine

Exelon Nuclear

Circuit City

TCF Bank

Paris Hilton

Easy-Bake Ovens

Google

Mummified corpses

Jessica Simpson

Jackson Hewitt

The Virginia Tourism Corp.

Hugo Chávez

Juan Carlos

365 Main

One Laptop Per Child

CIBC analyst Meredith Whitney

Southwest Airlines

Singapore Airlines

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal

SkyWest Airlines

Doug Parker

British Airways

Southwest Airlines, Part 2

Iberia Airlines

Jet Blue

British Airways Part 2

World Toilet Association

Kitson boutique

WikiScanner

Blogger

Intel

Century 21

D.R. Horton

Maria Bartiromo
The complete 101 See the full list, featuring the very best of the very worst moments this year. (more)
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