The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

1. A Bear Market for Barry

During each quarter's earnings season, we've noticed, you can count on at least one respectable executive to go nuts.

This quarter, that executive is Barry Diller.

Yes. On Tuesday evening, following the release of mixed second-quarter results, the IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI Quote) boss managed to turn a mildly unpleasant conference call into a truly painful, 104-minute marathon.

The plot line was oh-so familiar: Management reports short-term troubles, analysts ask about the long-term outlook, management chastises analysts for failing to see the Big Picture. This is standard stuff.

What wasn't standard was Diller's reaction. To be sure, many executives clearly doubt that analysts and reporters can comprehend the glory of their company's prospects. But Diller did a singularly bad job of masking his frustration in a feature-film-length, 87-minute question-and-answer session.

The low point came in response to a cordial-as-possible question from Piper Jaffray's Safa Rashtchy, an IAC bull who asked Diller what made him so confident about the travel sector.

"I don't want to at all be defensive about this," Diller responded. "The truth is, our travel businesses are growing. Your expectations and anyone else's expectations be damned, they are actually growing."

Why no, Barry. You don't sound defensive at all.

But Diller was just getting started. "I'd be damned if anybody can find a single negative" with international travel, he said, "other than the fact that international travel as such for one quarter was down. Now do you think really that international travel is not gonna continue to grow as travel has always kind of grown?"

Ultimately, Diller's response morphed into an indictment of all the company's critics. "You have said to us for two years that our margins ... are gonna deteriorate. You've said it for two years. You've asked us forty-seven thousand times about it. We have said forty-eight thousand times we don't agree with you. Two years later, we are -- again -- minus 80 basis points -- we said it'd be 100, and that was entirely acceptable to us -- de-gra-da-tion."

Chilly Diller Not IACI to eye with analysts

Fools!, we can almost hear him screaming to the pitchfork-wielding, torch-carrying mob. This isn't a monster! I have created life!

When IAC tanked after hours Tuesday, American Technology Research analyst Mark Mahaney blamed not only the numbers, but the company's "rambling, frustrating" conference call. "It just seemed like the company was talking itself into a dizzying, downward spiral," wrote Mahaney in a research note.

Mahaney has a buy rating on IAC. With friends like that, one shudders to think of what the company's enemies are saying.