Whole Foods Markets, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFMI), once the grocery darling of the investing market, took a serious wrong turn somewhere in the M&A market in 2007. Ever since the ill-fated acquisition of Wild Oats, WFMI has taken a dive, plunging from highs in the $60s (2006) and $50s (until late 2007) to as low as $8.68 this past December. So it was with great joy that investors heralded news of the company's fiscal third quarter results last night, exceeding analyst expectations, with earnings per share of $0.25, or $35.0 million, and sales up 2% over the year-ago quarter, to $1.9 billion. Same-store sales declined compared to the year-earlier quarter, but reversed their declining trend, down 2.5% from Q3 2008 but up from Q2 2009.

Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) CEO John Mackey nearly derailed his company's acquisition of Wild Oats with a series of blog entries and bizarre anonymous message board posting doing everything from trashing competitors to complimenting his own hairstyle.

The SEC opened an investigation that was recently closed without any action and now Mackey is back to blogging on the Whole Foods site. In a rambling post, Mackey explained the reasoning behind his postings and thanked his board of directors and the SEC for their support. He strongly denied that his postings critical of Wild Oats were designed to beat down that company's stock price, and also said that he had not intended to inflate this price of Whole Foods Market stock with his enthusiastic posts on that message board.

He added that "I wish to apologize to all the stakeholders of Whole Foods Market-customers, Team Members, investors, suppliers, and our communities."

Great. Now if he could just lower the prices so us poor folks could afford a 12 ounce bottle of organic carrot juice.

Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI) CEO John Mackey needs to retire to spend more time with his family. In addition to the fact that the share price has lost nearly half its value in less than 2 years, Mr. Mackey has demonstrated appallingly bad judgment, and may even have crossed the line into violations of Regulation FD.

When asked -- Actually, he wasn't asked. just decided to post a rant on his blog -- to explain his emails to board members regarding the proposed acquisition of Wild Oats (NASDAQ: OATS), he chalked it up "macho posturing." Macho posturing? Can you imagine how much fun that guy must be to work with?

Mackey apologized for "errors in judgment", for which he received the "gold medal for understatement" from BloggingStocks writer Jonathan Berr. Berr called it "monumental stupidity" and I would agree with that characterization. Do Whole Food shareholders really want someone who is monumentally stupid running a $5.7 billion company?

Whole Foods' board of director has announced a probe into Mackey's actions, and the SEC is also investigating.

Perhaps Mackey's penchant for "macho posturing" is preventing him from stepping down, but it really would be the best thing for all involved.