Ken Thompson is a great leader and a great man. With him at the helm, Wachovia is sure to bounce back. Just look at today's market results...the Dow sank 200+ points...and Wachovia went up.

Wachovia's service and reputation remain intact...and will show positive results in the long run.

Mr. Thompson's move reminds me of another great leader who believed in his company. John Reed did exactly the same thing back in the 80' when C was in trouble. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Reed obviously come from the same school. Good luck to Mr. Thompson on his investment.

Get your facts straight Mr.Katsman. Stan O'Neal did not receive any serverance from Merrill Lynch. What he received included cashing in on stock options that had value and which he was entitled to just like any other employee. If you want proof, go back to the Wall Street Journal of October 30th.

And yes, Ken Thompson did buy stock in his company, but so do hundreds of other corporate CEOs. 95% of CEOs are extremely intelligent, competent who work enormous amount of hours, have skills that are above 99.9% of the population and have made billions of dollars for you and other investors. If you read 10K reports, you would see that almost all CEOs own stock in their companies. They believe in their companies. Otherwise, how would they even be hired in the first place and why would they put up with the headaches and sacrifices that come with these high stress jobs?

But you and the media in general demonize these people and put in the headlines the bottom 5% so that these bottom fishers appear to be the norm. Is there any wonder that "investor cynicism towards CEOs (is) at an all time high"? A self fulfilling prophecy?

And getting back to cynicism, are shareholders unhappy with the job that Mark Hurd has done at Hewlett Packard, cleaning up the mess left by Carly Fiorina or with the CEOs at Apple, Google, Fed Ex, Caterpillar and others whose stock prices have more than doubled in some cases in the last three years.