The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Year

1. Serious Snooping

Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ Quote) spy games didn't turn out to be much fun for anyone.

This year it emerged that the Palo Alto, Calif., tech giant had been rummaging through employees' and journalists' phone records in hopes of ferreting out the source of boardroom news leaks.

The probe did eventually expose the leak: longtime director Jay Keyworth. But it also gave H-P -- once considered the Silicon Valley model of upright management -- a shiner that won't soon fade. ...