Mike Mayo is a straight shooter, too bad Deutsche won’t let me talk to him.

A couple of weeks ago Mike Mayo, a Deutsche Bank analyst, caught my attention in a story about the latest Citigroup report and conference call on The Street.com.

News spread fast about the Mayo v. Chuck Prince stand off, as the analyst firmly questioned the Citigroup chairman about Citi’s performance and promises Prince made earlier in the year.

"Chuck said this was the year of no excuses," Mayo said on Monday's conference call. "You guys say the results are disappointing. So what are the repercussions at the level of the office of the chairman?"

So far there are none, as Prince works furiously to save his own hide. He responded lamely to Mayo's fusillade Monday that "any fair-minded person would say that [the] strategic plan is working," Citi's lagging stock price nothwithstanding.

Mayo pressed on, saying that "almost all the investors that I talk with feel like there needs to be more significant changes in terms of management." Struggling to shoehorn this diatribe into the question-and-answer format, he added, "So that is the data I am looking at. What are you looking at?"

Read the article here.

You can read the entire AWESOME exchange transcribed here by Seeking Alpha.

Being snarky on a conference call gets you dropped from third to seventh in the questions queue, according to WSJ.com’s Deal Journal – which wasn’t staying out this dog fight.

Forcing the CEO to confront reality is priceless.

More impressive is that Mayo keeps the war fires burning. While newspapers sip the peyote over scalping Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal and Citigroup’s Chuck Prince, Mayo kept a steady grip on his tomahawk as he slashed Merill’s ratings from "buy" to "hold".

What I like about Mayo is his skepticism and insight into the level of subprime exposure big banks carry. In an interview with CNBC, Mayo said he is expecting further writedowns of over $10 billions in the final quarter.

He lists Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Wachovia as potential culprits. Mayo explains that these big boys still bear a lot of risk through subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations.

Tragically, Deutsche Bank wouldn’t let me interview Mayo, or read any of his reports because they decided I am not a "member of the media." As I launched into an explanation of my journalistic status I heard the receiver hit the cradle.

Clearly they don’t read my blog.