Welcome to the Second Annual Foolies. All right, it's technically the "Fool Awards," but I'm trying to start a trend here!

We'll be looking back on a miserable year and voting on the best ... even if "the best" is occasionally just a nice way of saying "the worst."  

Your votes will determine the winners in our 10 categories, and settle important debates like:

  • Could Alan Mulally of Ford (NYSE:F) or John Thain of Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC)) really be the best CEO?
  • Was Iceland's meltdown a bigger surprise than JPMorgan Chase's (NYSE:JPM) Bear Stearns hug?
  • Better prognosticator: John "More money than Hank" Paulson, or Meredith "Wall Street will go down, and it will go down hard" Whitney?
  • Which is the more Foolish product: Nintendo's (OTC BB: NTDOY.PK) Wii Fit, or Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone App Store? Or will it be the Snuggie?
  • Will Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A) (NYSE:BRK-B) win four of the 10 awards, the way they did last year? (Spoiler alert: No ... we limited them to one category: Must-Read of the Year).

Without further ado, here are this year's Fool Award nominees: