The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

1. Where's Katherine Harris When You Need Her?

So Hewlett-Packard (HWP Quote) shareholders have approved the company's acquisition of Compaq (CPQ Quote). Maybe.

See, H-P says it will take probably "the next few weeks" for IVS Associates, the independent tabulators of H-P's hotly contested shareholder vote, to count the ballots from the unknown percentage of H-P's 900,000 shareholders who voted on the company's future.

A month? Give us a break.

Maybe the future of Silicon Valley is at issue here, but this isn't rocket science. Back when the 2000 presidential election was being decided in Florida -- with the fate of the free world at stake -- we had 6 million votes to count, Supreme Court hearings and chad jokes on David Letterman.

But despite the distracting sideshows, we still managed to come up with a definitive answer in five weeks -- not much longer than IVS is supposed to take.

Hey, no problem. We're sure all those Hewlett-Packard employees waiting to find out whether the postmerger ax will fall on them -- or not -- will be extremely productive and focused while the Newark, Del.-based IVS plows through a few hundred-thousand ballots.

2. Loaded Bristol

What's the most disturbing side-effect of the bitter pill Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY Quote) swallowed this week?

Was it the embarrassment of disappointing clinical results for Vanlev, which followed Erbitux as the second Bristol-Myers blockbuster-wannabe to stumble on its way out of the gate?

Was it the 15% stock slide Wednesday to $41.08 -- the lowest close in four years? Or the intraday low of $40, a similarly ignoble mark?

No, it's the inevitable name change. Given the company's ailing stock price and bone-dry pipeline, observers say Bristol-Myers is ripe for a takeover. Novartis (NVS Quote) is a logical candidate.

But for sheer Dumbness, we're rooting for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK Quote).

Picture it now: The new pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKlineBristolMyersSquibb. Better yet, a company that pays full homage to all its predecessors: GlaxoBurroughsWellcomeSmithKlineBeechamBristolMyersSquibb.

Their auditor? PricewaterhouseCoopersAndersen, of course.

3. Yes, We Can Imagine Them in Pinstripes

Baseball has never really captured our imagination as a sport to gamble on. And that was before we got a press release this week from Billy Martin's USA.

See, this bulletin board stock, named after the late former manager of the New York Yankees, put out a press release Thursday explaining how it hopes to raise $1.5 million and get listed on the Nasdaq.

The idea is to extend "Billy Martin's" brand name to "exciting product categories and markets both at home and abroad" -- stuff like "a collection of western-inspired home decor products; a cologne and home fragrance; a Billy Martin's western barbecue food products and restaurant concept; and a western art and artifacts division celebrating the history, beauty and natural resources of America."

Oddly enough, when we think of Billy Martin, our thoughts don't necessarily turn to cologne or the beauty of America. Rather, what pops into mind is the image of an angry, aggressive drinker who took managing jobs with the discerning quality Elizabeth Taylor has used to select husbands. When we think about Billy Martin and America's natural resources, we think about him and a drinking buddy taking a fatal drive off an icy road in upstate New York.

Yes, we're sure that with Billy Martin nipping at his heels, Ralph Lauren is quaking in his cowboy boots.

4. Shoot Craps First, Ask Questions Later

We never thought we'd feel sympathetic toward Arthur Andersen, a company whose Dumbness we have documented on a near-weekly basis since the first of the year.

But, hey. There's always the Greater Dumbness theory.

In this case, it leads us to New Jersey state attorney general David Samson, who this week asked the state's Casino Control Commission to bar the state's gaming companies from doing business with Andersen. Such an edict could come as early as next Wednesday; companies such as Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (DJT Quote) and Harrah's Entertainment (HET Quote) would have all of 15 days to comply.

Never mind that the misdeeds at the heart of Enron's felony indictment apparently took place deep in the heart of Texas, far from Boardwalk and Park Place. Never mind that New Jersey, for the past 15 years, has seen fit to leave oversight of accounting to the accountants. Time's a-wastin'.

See, Samson has to look out for the little guy, the senior citizens and disabled adults who get $400 million a year out of the casino revenue fund.

Sure. Just the way the state looks out for the little guy's right to get drunk on free booze, gamble away a paycheck on video poker, withdraw some more money from an ATM, and gamble away that on progressive slots.

Yes, it's essential, as Samson points out, to maintain public confidence in New Jersey's casino industry and its financial soundness. We can't let a bunch of rogue CPAs in Houston besmirch that business.

5. Who Was the Marketing Genius Who Thought of That One?

Actually, the only Dumb Thing we could find in the newest addition to the Lab's reference library is the title of this new book: F'd Companies by Philip J. Kaplan (Simon & Schuster, scheduled publication date April 9, 2002).

Aside from the title -- a euphemistic contraction that will have library patrons struggling to find its entry in the card catalogue, F'd Companies is a work of genius -- the creation of an accidental writer whose insight, breadth of knowledge and melodiously cranky voice puts all of us journalism-school-educated wretches to shame.

Kaplan, nicknamed Pud, is the computer guy who, on a whim in April 2000, created a Web site devoted to chronicling the death throes of star-crossed dot-coms, a Web site that the family-friendliness of the research lab forces us to render as F---edCompany.com.

His book is a loosely organized sampling of some 150 of the ill-fated companies whose demises graced his culturally phenomenal Web site over the past two years. It's got brief descriptions of their business models intertwined with Kaplan's commentary.

Despite the George Carlinesque language of the book, this is undoubtedly the reference work that future generations of historians, business school students and buy-side analysts will study in an attempt to understand just how nutty things got in the Internet business at the turn of the century.

This entry on SwapIt.com is one of the few passages in the book we can quote without provoking our mother to wash our mouth out with soap:

So let me get this straight:

• I send them a CD.
  
• They give me useless "SwapIt Bucks."
  
• They go out of business.
  
• I get nothing.

Great, sign me up!

Further details about the used-CD and videogame trading company follow, ending with Kaplan's sage observation: "I believe," he writes, "this is the only dot-com that actually had people sending them product and they still couldn't stay in business."

You can preorder F'd Companies from Amazon right now. And no, we're not recommending it just because a percentage of your purchase funds our Friday beer bashes. Though it does.