A small item in last Tuesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal reported that a town-hall meeting that had been planned for employees of the newly conjoined Merrill Lynch and Bank of America had been cancelled. The article suggested the cancellation was a cost-saving measure, but also questioned the wisdom of the move “in the wake of a shotgun merger.”
 
The piece was far less electrifying than the other news of the past week that Merrill's brokerage chief ...