Merrill CEO says Mistakes led to 2.3 billion dollar Loss.

Merrill Lynch CEO says that a lot of mistakes were made in the sub prime lending arm which led to the 7.9 billion dollar write down, but could it be a cover up for merrill trying to boost its profits by giving loans to people who could not afford it?

In a statement to CNBC, Oneal says, "The bottom line is we got it wrong by being overexposed to subprime, and we suffered as a result of an unprecedented liquidity squeeze and further deterioration of the market," O'Neal said during a conference call. "No one is more disappointed than I am at that result; I'm not going to talk around the fact that there were some mistakes that were made," he said. "We, I, am accountable for those mistakes just as I'm accountable for the performance of the firm overall."

Of all the big Wall street Banks Merrill Lynch is the only one to report a quarterly loss and with a 7.9 million dollar write down Merrill is by far the street's biggest loser companered to the combined writedown of 3.6 billion dollar writedown of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

At the opening of the markets the stock took a beating, opening as much as 6 percent down. This is not good news for merrill which as seen its down being down 28 percent since this year.