Microsoft Inc. (NASDAQ: MSFT) was silly for offering Yahoo! ( NASDAQ: YHOO) way too much money to buy the company and finally came to it's senses.

Yahoo! was oh so silly for not accepting over $45 billion and now the stock is down 33%, ironically because the last offer from MSFT was $33 per share. I have no data on the subject, but I have to believe that this is probably one of the richest buyouts of all time to be rejected.

Then comes silly old Carl Icahn thinking he could force Jerry Yang's hand and make him sell out to MSFT at a premium to his average share price reported at $25.00. He has made some shrewd moves over the past 20 years but this does not seem to be one of them today. Instead of making millions on the upside, for now it looks like he will lose as much as he hoped to gain on the downside.
I could share with you many very silly comments by numerous analysts and pundits about this subject, but what for? They are just guessing what is going to happen next -- how silly.

Currently YHOO is trading around $22.00 per share, after they announced what I would call a sideline deal (losing sight of the big game) with Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) that amounts to a big nothing. Deal "One of the Worst Strategic Maneuvers Seen in Internet Industry" -Deutsche Bank

One more bit of silliness in todays business headlines, my colleague Joseph Lazzaro has posted Inflation Picture Worsens which is true, and the market has been soft lately, but somehow the reporting of this bad news has sent the DJIA, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 Index up. That does not usually happen, so much for predictions....like Sunday Funnies: Big Brown a sure thing at Belmont

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of MSFT or YHOO.