Gasparino slams Bank of America CEO

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It only takes a spark to start a fire, which could then turn into an inferno. Will Charlie Gasparino's latest diatribe against Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan prove to be such a spark?

Moynihan, who has struggled to turn Bank of America around since joining the firm in January 2010, has been spared talk about whether he's the right guy for the job. For the most part, people are still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, as most agree that Ken Lewis handed him a near impossible job. Lewis' decision to buy Countrywide will likely go down as a textbook example of a disastrous deal. But at what point will investors and others start calling for Moynihan's job?

Gasparino does not mince words: "The bank is being led by possibly the most unqualified CEO in all of corporate America. I say this not because I dislike Moynihan; I've met him and he's seems like a nice enough guy. Some smart people on Wall Street hold him in high regard for basically the same thing; if there is a CEO in financial business who wants to do the right thing, they say it's probably Brian Moynihan. But desire aside, Moynihan has been nothing short of a klutz as a leader. Part of his problem is that he's a lawyer by training and lawyers make lousy CEOs (remember Chuck Prince's messy tenure at Citigroup). But at least Prince proved to be a decent lawyer who fought his way up the corporate ladder to replace Sandy Weill as Citi's chief executive. The best you can say about Moynihan is that he got the job by default. Before he became CEO, Moynihan was a regarded as B-player at best by his colleagues."

And Gasparino adds this: "Moynihan took over in January 2010 and began screwing up from the start."

Gasparino faults Moynihan for a lot of things, including not adequately preparing for the onslaught of mortgage-related legal activity we're now seeing. We'll have to see if anyone piles onto this bandwagon. If so, it will complicate the picture even more.

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