TSC Weekender: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

THE PULSE Where TSC feels the market's beat. MORE THE TRADER'S TONGUE JJC translates Street-speak. MORE

Buffett is a badass once again. And columnist Christopher Edmonds is on hand at the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) annual meeting Saturday to see if this vaunted value investor passes the smell test. Also Saturday, TSC Weekender Comics returns with another Titan of Finance: Katrina Garnett. And Seattle still got you riled up? Then check in Sunday with the U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to hear what she has to say about China and the WTO, in the TSC Streetside Chat. Hint: She thinks it's a good idea.

How the Microsoft Have Fallen

Two potentially monopolistic monoliths are better than one. At least someone seems to think so.

All week the business world anticipated a proposal from federal prosecutors that Microsoft (MSFT) be broken up into two pieces -- one selling the Windows operating system, the other, applications software such as the Office suite, which includes the word-processing and spreadsheet programs every office drone knows too well.

And while at least one state was not unified with the federal government and the other states in the proposal, Friday the ax fell. The Justice Department and 19 states urged a federal judge to cleave the mighty Microsoft in two to prevent it from violating antitrust law.

The company, naturally, disagreed with this assessment and proposal.

And investors had their own ideas throughout the week. Jitteriness over Mister Softee's future had the stock lurching down 15.6% Monday, amidst a general tech unraveling. But by the time Friday rolled around, the stock had stabilized. In regular trading, it closed down 1/16, a little less than 1%, at 69 3/4. After-hours trading Friday was mixed.

(For more information on the government's action against the Redmond, Wash. software giant, see our Microsoft Trial Timeline.)

"Why do mutual funds not disclose their positions and trades in real-time?" asks Jim Torii, who bills himself as "Idiot-in-the-making." None of that, Jim. Mutual funds' disclosure is not such a cut-and-dried issue that only this box's namesakes would be curious. What's interesting is that many mutual funds don't show you what they're doing because they don't want you to know. MORE Enter the Idiot Box, where all your pesky little questions will be treated with kind condescension. As your fifth-grade teacher used to say, everybody else wants to know the answer, too. Please do send your queries.

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