The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

First stop was the State Department's Office of Protocol, the government's official politeness authority. What, we asked, was the proper salutation for a letter to the president of the United States? "Dear Mr. President," replied the woman at the other end of the line. Not "My dear Mr. President"? we asked. After some consultation with others in the office, she reported that no one was familiar with that salutation. "It may very well be an old style," she said.

Hmm. The Bush administration has been around for barely two years. We decided to seek a more seasoned authority: etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige, White House social secretary during the Kennedy administration. "It used to be proper to write 'My Dear Mr. President,' but that is now dated," Baldrige emailed us. "The proper salutation at present for the incumbent is: 'Dear Mr. President:'"

That seemed authoritative. But once we got on the subject, we just couldn't stop ourselves. So on we went to one last expert, Molly Raiser, chief of protocol during the Clinton administration. "The only salutation that's appropriate is 'Dear Mr. President,'" a Raiser spokesman told us after consulting with her.

"'My dear Mr. President' would be used to write to someone who is not the president anymore [and] who is a personal friend," continued Raiser's spokesman. "So, for example, Ambassador Raiser could write to former President Clinton and say, 'My Dear Mr. President.' But 'Dear Mr. President' is the correct salutation for a sitting president."

Well, you read it here first. Harvey Pitt is so out of touch with Washington, D.C., that he can't even write a resignation letter without screwing up.

2. Wish You Were Here. Or, at Least, Your Bed.

All you business travelers out there, we know how it goes. After a long day on the road, you call your spouse or domestic partner from your hotel room. "Miss me, honey?" asks the spouse. "Sure I do," you reply.

You big, fat liar, you.

Yes, we know you're lying, thanks to a press release we received Thursday from a unit of paper goods and personal care manufacturer Kimberly-Clark KMB.

The point of the press release, as far as we could tell, was to explain how a Kimberly-Clark survey of 618 travelers definitively proves that hotels should stock high-quality toiletries from companies such as Kimberly-Clark.

But the real good stuff in the survey was the response to Kimberly-Clark's question about what people missed the most when they stayed in a hotel. Thirty-six percent of respondents said they missed their own beds. And how many missed their family? Sixteen percent.

Well, that's a scary thought. A lot of business travelers out there miss the marriage bed, we conclude. They just don't miss the marriage.

3. Liberty's Inside Job

Speaking of bedfellows and corporate oversight, we couldn't help thinking this week about Liberty Media L.

You remember Liberty, the media company with stakes in the Discovery Channel and other programming. The chairman of Liberty is John Malone, the head of onetime cable colossus Tele-Communications Inc., which Malone sold to AT&T T a few years back.

The reason we have Liberty on our minds these days, bedfellow-wise and corporate oversight-wise, is the announcement the company made a few weeks ago about a new director being added to the company board.

What with companies so eager these days to implement good governance practices and establish independent, strong-minded boards, we wondered whether Liberty might join the parade and appoint a paragon of independence to its board.

Then we saw the name of the new board member: Kim Magness.

Then we laughed a little.

See, whatever your definition of independent director is -- and the New York Stock Exchange is in the midst of rejiggering its own definition -- Kim Magness likely wouldn't be the first person to come to mind, as far as Liberty is concerned.

Of course, Magness is a major Liberty shareholder, and that is a good reason for him to show up for board meetings. But as for independence, well, one problem is that he has granted Malone an irrevocable proxy to vote his Liberty shares, as a Liberty spokesman confirms. Plus, he happens to be the actual son of the late Bob Magness, the father figure who hired Malone to run TCI back in 1973.