When John Thain was forced out as chief executive of Merrill Lynch last week after hurrying through billions in bonuses for executives at the money-losing brokerage and spending $1.2 million to redesign his corner office, the once-admired Wall Street titan joined a long – and growing – list of executives whose reputations have been beaten down as much as the average retirement account.

But Thain’s missteps stood out from the pack. In addition to mismanaging risk and leading his firm – and investors – to ruin, Thain proved to be tone deaf to how much the culture of Wall Street has changed. Excessive spending is out – especially when you are being handed billions in taxpayers’ bailouts.

For this, Thain joins The Post’s list of the worst of Wall Street.

Ken Lewis, the Bank of America chief who forced Thain out, isn’t much brighter than the man he ousted. He didn’t do his due diligence before buying Merrill, and failed to notice a $15 billion pile of something nasty left behind by the thundering herd.

And who could forget Bernie Madoff and his pal Ezra Merkin. Madoff was once the king of Wall Street, who sat on the board of the NASD, the regulator charged with overseeing brokerages like his. It is no wonder he didn’t get caught running an alleged Ponzi scheme for more than 40 years.

Meanwhile, Merkin – supposedly one of the best-connected middlemen in the business – steered billions of dollars into Madoff’s scam, a scam he says he thought was a legit business.

These four financial-sector standouts join Bear Stearns’ cigar-chomping leader Jimmy Cayne, who spent much of his time playing golf and perfecting his bridge game while the firm was crumbling.

Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, grew up destined to follow in the footsteps of his father – a butcher from the Bronx. He instead leant his meat-cleaving skills to the mortgage market, selling subprime loans to millions who could not afford to pay them back. The butcher boy made sure he took home the bacon though, paying himself $470 million between 2001 and 2006.

And can you believe that Dick Fuld actually took credit, as chief executive of Lehman Brothers, for steering the bank safely around the credit crunch? That is until Lehman filed for Chapter 11 last September. During his 14 years at the top, Fuld earned more than $500 million at Lehman. Investors lost billions.

Citigroup has provided more than its fare share of banking bozos. Top of the list is Sandy Weill, the man who in 1998 invented the one-stop, financial-services shop by rolling an investment bank into a commercial bank and an insurance company. Ten years down the line they say it is too big to fail, but after receiving $45 billion of government cash and more than $300 billion of loan guarantees from the Treasury it sure looks like it is heading that way.

And who could forget Bob Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury Secretary who was supposed to be the sage of Citi’s boardroom? He turned out to be more of a wise guy than a wise man before skulking off to retirement earlier this month.