The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

3. Cerus Your Old Man

What hath Eliot Spitzer wrought? We gueth we'll find out thoon.

As ace biotech reporter Adam Feuerstein pointed out, the blood-focused Cerus (CERS) commenced a public offering of 6 million shares Thursday, a day after the company announced the latest delay in getting its flagship product to market.

What most fascinated us about the news was Feuerstein's observation regarding underwriter Morgan Stanley. See, Glenn Reicin, the Morgan Stanley analyst who covers Cerus, has an underweight-volatile rating on the stock -- a ranking he reiterated Wednesday, given "the projected length of time to profitability, the company's projected financing needs and the challenges the company faces in achieving its operating targets."

This, of course, is exactly what you want in the New Wall Street: research analysts not bothering to coordinate their stock ratings with their firms' investment banking business.

But we at the research lab are thankful we're not a Morgan Stanley broker trying to hawk this particular issue. We can imagine what it's like to be working the phones for this one. "Cerus, huh? Never heard of it," says the investor at the other end of the line. "What does your research guy think of it?"

"Um, um. ... You know, I forgot to ask," replies the broker. "What do you say I get back to you on that one?"

4. Yes, I Am Wise. But It's Wisdom Born of Exercise Prices

Here's something fascinating we learned this week: Stock options are a women's issue.

At least, that's what Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) believes.

For Women Only Barbara Boxer's take on options

As the San Jose Mercury News reported last month -- and as we just got around to reading on Thursday -- Boxer made that assertion as part of the effort by several lawmakers to badger the Financial Accounting Standards Board into maintaining employee stock options' status as a nonexpense.

At a Washington, D.C., meeting with the FASB chairman in early May, Boxer laid it on thick with the argument-by-lip-quivering-anecdote that elected officials love so well. Sun Microsystems (SUNW) options helped Kristin Amundsen buy a house and set up a home office so she could spend more time with her young daughter, the Merc reported Boxer as saying. Sun's Richard Berlin cashed in options so his wife could pay off her college loans, buy a car and set up a business.

"This is a women's issue," the Merc quoted Boxer as saying. "This is an issue that impacts people who are trying to climb up the ladder, and I don't want to see them lose out."

We at the lab suspect overpaid male executives may be benefiting a trifle more from stock options than the spirited women in Boxer's warm and fuzzy thumbnail sketches.

Calling options expensing a women's issue is like raising the interstate speed limit to 120 mph so that gunshot victims can get to the hospital faster. Certainly, these people deserve our concern. But there's got to be a more efficient way to help them out.

5. Martha Stewart Leaving Omnipotence

Speaking of women's issues, we've spent 15 years making fun of Martha Stewart, we confess. But now we feel sorry for her.

We understand that if Martha Stewart did what the feds allege, she did some bad things: chiefly, lying to investigators to whom she shouldn't have lied.

But we reached the, um, tipping point for our sympathy when we read one particular quote in The New York Times from James B. Comey, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York: "Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not for who she is but because of what she did."

That's not the issue. The issue is, if Martha Stewart weren't who she is, would prosecutors have been working on her case for the past year and a half? Working tirelessly to nail down the truth behind a 4,000-share sale of ImClone (IMCLE) stock?

If you answer yes to that question, we have a few shares of a nanotech stock we'd like to sell you.

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