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Fast Eddie Lampert, CEO of Sears and hedge fund chief, compares himself and Sears to Eli Manning and the New York Giants in his letter to stockholders. The gist is that quarterback Manning suffered a tough season and media critics before winning the super bowl. Or give Eddie the benefit of the doubt.

Lampert is looking for a new CEO, and he should include a new financial writer who wouldn’t choose such a silly sports comparison. Fourth quarter earnings dropped about 48 percent to $426 million from $811 million. Full year earnings were $826 million, down from $1.5 billion in 2006. Same store sales for the fourth quarter were down 4.5 percent.

Okay no one would accuse Lampert of being a merchant, but he is renowned as a stock picker. He bought back about $2.9 billion worth of Sears’ stock at an average price of $135, and now the shares are trading in the one hundred dollar range. The company has about $1.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents, which is down from $3.8 billion a year ago. The company only spent $580 million on capital expenditures, which is a pittance in its aging store base.

Merchandise inventories are about $10 billion, the same as they were at the end of fiscal 2006. Margins dropped several percentage points because of markdowns and a decrease in consumers’ disposable income. Lampert pointed out that DieHard, Craftsman, Kenmore and Lands’ End are under distributed brands.

Those brands are one of the few drawing cards left for the retail stores and one can only imagine if Wal-Mart or Target had distribution rights for those brands as well as Sears and Kmart? Continued declines in same store sales, high energy costs to heat and cool stores and a markdown, recessionary environment should make “Eli” Lampert’s sports fantasy just that.