Greater Fools?

“In Charles Dickens's ‘Great Expectations,’ Miss Havisham lives a life stopped in time by her canceled wedding. Floating around her house in a tattered wedding dress, with a marital feast decomposing on the table, she pretends that life never changed.

“Miss Havisham may well be the model for companies that launched quixotic, failed bids to take over rivals. The executives of two of those companies -- Microsoft Corp. and Blockbuster Inc. -- have described a future in which they gained all the advantages of an acquisition without actually doing one.

“Blockbuster Chief Executive Jim Keyes argued to investors on Thursday that his company is just as well off after dropping its $1.35 billion bid for Circuit City Stores Inc. as it would have been if it had done the deal...

“Of course, that result must only make investors wonder why Blockbuster offered a hefty 58% premium for Circuit City back in April, with no knowledge of its target's finances...

“Even as Blockbuster barreled forward, the market dragged down Blockbuster's stock. Investors feared a big acquisition would be a distraction to Blockbuster's turnaround, take the video-rental company far afield of its business model and use up financing that could be devoted to other purposes.

“The same pattern could be detected in Microsoft's bid for Yahoo Inc.

“The unsolicited offer… defied any predictable takeover strategy. Microsoft argued that an acquisition of Yahoo would improve its standing in the search business.

“Investors weren't quite so sure about the deal, which would have been a radical strategic move for Microsoft.

“Microsoft's shares sank on the fear that a large acquisition with a lightly thought-out integration would only drag down the software giant and denude its strong cash position.

“When Microsoft finally said it would drop its bid, it disavowed its aggressive pursuit and adopted a ‘Yahoo who?’ stance. ‘Yahoo was never the strategy we were pursuing,’ Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said.”

(“Deal Journal / Breaking Insight From WSJ.com” Heidi N. Moore. Wall Street Journal: August 11, 2008. pg. C.3)

DISINGENUOUS, dissembling, dissimulating -- look them up in the dictionary, and you'll see pictures of Jim Keyes, Steve Ballmer, and the whole gang.

Say what you mean; mean what you say. Or, try to have it both ways. We are taken for fools.

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
We're idiots, babe.
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.
(Dylan)