So. It begins.

We told you guys weeks ago that all the happy talk about Bank of American keeping Merrill Lynch intact after gobbling it up in the first days of the Great Deleveraging was way, way too happy. Now comes ML CEO John Thain to say that, yup, thousands of jobs will go poof as a result of the $50b. takeover. The continuing cover story is that both BofA and ML will absorb losses as the combined company restructures.

Don’t you believe that either. Sure, a few nominal BofA backoffice cuts will occur and attempts will be made to keep some of ML’s customer-facing arms lest big-time investors bolt, but the bulk of the cuts always, always come from the company that is bought, not from the guys cutting the check.