The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

1. Message Board Bandit

Whole Foods WFMI chief John Mackey isn't looking too wholesome.

The founder of the Austin, Texas, organic grocery chain was unmasked this week as a rogue poster on the Yahoo! Finance message boards. Writing under the assumed name "Rahodeb" -- an anagram for Deborah, his wife's name -- Mackey spent eight years talking up his company and trashing rivals such as Wild Oats OATS.

"The company still stinks and remains grossly overvalued based on very weak fundamentals," Rahodeb wrote of Wild Oats in a March 29, 2006, post. "The stock is up now, but if it doesn't get sold in the next year or so it is going to plummet back down. Wait and see."

Rahodeb didn't just snipe at the competition, of course. He also took pains to applaud Whole Foods and its hard-hitting management.

"I like Mackey's haircut," Rahodeb wrote in April 2000. "I think he looks cute!"

Rahodeb's rantings are of interest now because Whole Foods agreed this past February to buy Wild Oats for $565 million. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal, saying it would reduce competition. Whole Foods and Wild Oats pledged to fight the suit, but as usual Mackey went a step further.

In a lengthy post on the Whole Foods Web site, Mackey accused the agency of using "bullying tactics" and having "neglected to do its homework." In response, he promised that Whole Foods would "be as transparent as possible throughout this process."

What's transparent now is that Mackey holds a ridiculously high opinion of himself. He hardly blushed at having his message-board identity exposed, noting that "many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms."

Earth to Mackey: The rest of them aren't CEOs.

Dumb-o-Meter score: 95. "At a minimum," former Securities and Exchange Commission chief Harvey Pitt told the The Wall Street Journal, Mackey's hiding behind a pseudonym was "bizarre and ill-advised, even if it isn't illegal."

Want more? Check out TheStreet.com TV video. Gregg Greenberg discusses the 5 Dumbest Things On Wall Street This Week.