Cayne out at Bear Stearns.

Two months ago, I joined quite a few other people in saying it was about time James Cayne resign from Bear Stearns. Bloomberg is reporting that an announcement will likely come this morning, confirming that Cayne will be stepping down.

In my post back in November, I lumped Cayne in with three other chief executives: Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, Todd Farha at WellCare, and George Halvorson at Kaiser Permanente. It’s going to be a fun year for each, I think.

In the two months since my post, CNBC predicted Mozilo will resign in 2008, and a few weeks later the Associated Press was kind enough to mention Mozilo in a priceless article entitled “Execs Busted Cheating, Brawling in 2007.”

Farha, on the other hand, might be in the best shape so far. While news of a federal probe into the company’s operations caused the stock of his company, WellCare, the plummet $85, from $116 to $31, Wall Street appears hopeful WellCare might get off with a fine for whatever it is the company was doing wrong. (Some say WellCare might have been playing a bit too loose with state Medicaid money.) It’s always a good sign when a company can pay its way out of a fraud investigation, isn’t it?

And then, there’s Halvorson. He promised a year ago that Kaiser Permanente would be facing financial dire straits by this point, yet 2007 has turned out to be the organization’s most profitable year, ever. But 2007 wasn’t a banner year for KP otherwise: membership growth collapsed, HealthConnect continued to stumble, and Halvorson began cutting critical reinvestments in care and infrastructure to help make the financial picture look pretty. Unfortunately, the house of cards (and, word has it, its board of directors) are starting to sway.

To try to rebuild confidence in his leadership, Halvorson began sending out weekly emails to all employees earlier in 2007. God only knows who told him that was a good idea (and since he spent 2007 firing almost every senior public relations advisor KP had, perhaps it was God himself who told him weekly emails would be a good idea?). But, I hear from inside the organization that many have finally figured out how to use Lotus Notes email filters, solely to send messages from a so-called “kp-office-of-the-ceo@kp.org” directly to the trash. How’s that for confidence?

Cayne out in 2008? Eight days in and the answer appears to be yes. Mozilo out in 2008? I agree with CNBC: yes. Farha? Depends on how these investigations wind up, I think. Halvorson? We shall see. We shall see…