CEOs have been doing the old soft shoe at quarterly report time since the market first form, but dancing now seems to have become a favored pastime of CEOs include Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Jerry Yang of Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and (surprise? hardly) Mark Cuban (also a yahoo).

Yang busted some moves recently dancing with the star of Where the Hell is Matt?, the outstanding internet feature following adventurer and dancer (I use the term loosely) Matt Harding. Don't miss the video at the end of this post, if you're not familiar with Matt. - it's perhaps the most charming, uplifting video I've seen in years.

Of course, who can forget Steve Ballmer's dance at the podium during a Microsoft presentation? And, of course, Mark, 'Gimme the Cubs" Cuban performing on Dancing with the Stars?

Come to think of it, many CEOs are already quite accomplished at performing the fan dance with their balance sheets. Ex-Gov. Spitzer has shown his fondness for the hustle and the shag, while Donald Rumsfeld is still waiting for the cakewalk to begin. Senator Craig seems to favor the swing, while President Bush appears dead-set on taking on the Persian Dance before he waltzes out of the White House.

And me? Having lived through the Vietnam Era, I'm doing the Time Warp again.

Thanks to Portfolio.com

Sam Zell is looking to unload the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise that came with his ill-timed $8.2 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co., and the most aggressive suitor appears to be dot-com billionaire Mark Cuban. The New York Times reports that he offered $1.3 billion for the the team, Wrigley Field, and the team's stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

But of course, Cuban, who has accumulated $1.7 million in fines during his tenure as owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is not without his critics, to say the least. He's too arrogant, too brash, and not gentlemanly enough, they say. He had trouble cracking into the old boy's network of the NBA, and Major League Baseball is said to be even more reluctant to change.

But if Cuban is the high bidder -- and the league will let him in -- it'll be a great day for the Cubs and for baseball. The team hasn't won a World Series since 1908 but, given Cuban's deep pockets and superhuman competitive drive, the Cubs would likely get the extra boost they need to finally win one. Plus, Cubs and Cuban have the same first three letters, so it's pretty much meant to be.

Baseball has dealt with a lot of scandal lately involving performance-enhancing drugs, and it's about time we added a passionate renegade to the current regime of old bureaucrats. And yes, I'm talking to you Ted Lerner.

My perennial near-hero Mark Cuban recently examined the issue of CEO pay, over on his handy soapbox, The Blog Maverick. In his blog post titled "My 2 Cents on CEO Pay," Mr. Cuban outlined his position on the subject and tossed some ideas around. The post makes a good read, and the author makes some good points. Additionally, the 65 or so comments by the readers are well worth the time to cruise them.

I'd like to discuss and expand upon an idea someone presented in addition to those discussed by Mark Cuban. It's actually a reverse scenario to what Mr. Cuban describes as moving chief executive officers into "the cash zone." In the Cuban scenario, the CEO would be paid cash, without additional compensation through stock grants, in order to make their pay more tangible and visible as a business expenditure. Mr. Cuban also asserts that this might more closely align CEO compensation with company performance. It's an admirable idea, but I doubt that it will ever happen.

In this alternate approach, we give the CEO all the stock certificates he or she can swallow. Then we provide an equal number to be divided among all other employees of the company. In this manner of compensation, all employees have their hands on the ball. The concept of laboring to line the pockets of someone else with gold would become extinct. The CEO would suddenly become a real person in the eyes of the rank-and-file laborers. Likewise, the labor force would be inextricably linked to the financial success of the CEO. If labor is to share the risk, they should also share the reward.

A further stop-gap to this scenario would be if upper management deemed that labor cuts were needed to create profitability, or for any reason other than "cause," they and the CEO would be required to surrender share holdings equal to the holdings of the displaced workers. These surrendered shares would then be distributed to the pink-slipped workforce members, with the company paying all applicable taxes on the transfer. Additionally, no party would be allowed to liquidate more than 5% of their holdings in any one year, as long as they were employed by the company, and upper management would be required to maintain holdings at least equal to those of the workforce.

I know it's a lofty scenario, but it sure would beat the heck out of what we have going on now.

After a hiatus that led many to suspect that Mark Cuban's ShareSleuth experiment had gone the way of the hula hoop, Chris Carey is back with a scathing report on China Fire & Security Group Inc. (NASDAQ: CFSG), which bills itself as a "leading total solution provider of industrial fire protection systems in China."

The ShareSleuth report found evidence of the usual suspects in pump and dumps: exaggerated resumes, disclosure issues, associations with characters of ill repute and a lot of hype combined with little evidence of a strong operating business.

Another major red flag: CEO Brian Lin told Mr. Carey in an email "that you should be careful since you don't know how strong our business is and how many big deals we are close to completion. CFSG SHORT SELLERS WILL BE SQUEEZED - SOON!!"

An email from a CEO to a journalist of that nature is highly irregular, securities lawyer Howard Sirota of Sirota & Sirota told me in a phone conversation. He added that it is a violation of Regulation Fair Disclosure, an SEC regulation requiring that material information be disseminated simultaneously to market participants: "It goes back to the concept of full and fair disclosure. That statement wasn't made in a public dissemination to the entire market. This is selective disclosure, an effort to effect the price of the stock by giving information to a selected market participant. The idea of full and fair disclosure is a level playing field. This is like whispering to one analyst 'We're gonna beat expectations."

Be sure to check out this story from ShareSleuth -- the site could develop into a tremendous resource for investors.

I often spend a little time over at Blogmaverick.com, where Mark Cuban recently sought to give the world of blogging a little of his insightful perspective. It seems that Mr. Cuban finds little to respect in the world of blogging, or at least in the world of slipshod ,cookie-cutter blogging. Though I found Mark's blog entry a trifle difficult to read, which is quite unusual coming from him, I nonetheless agree with most of the body of his post. I especially agree with his assertion that just because a blog is backed by the name of a well-known media organization does not in itself render that blog worthy of special notice.

Mark Cuban wrote, "...newspapers having 'bloggers' is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years." If newspapers are going in a wrong direction by producing blogs, perhaps they need to reinstall the title reporter and drop the title blogger to give a different perspective to the reader. If newspapers are using the term blog simply as a culture hook, then they have it all wrong and they're just selling their reporters short. I believe that I'm in agreement with Mark Cuban when I say that true reporters should be releasing content within some format other than blogs. Blogging is what I do, and I'll be the first to tell you that I'm no reporter. The titles are absolutely not interchangeable, though they may sometimes be used correctly in tandem.

This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007. Voting has now closed and readers have chosen Martha Stewart as the most annoying money personality of the year. Let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

In last year's Best & Worst in Money awards, Donald Trump was the easy victor in the Most Annoying Money Expert category, securing 44% of the votes, more than twice as much as Suze Orman, Jim Cramer, or Mark Cuban. Trump won by such a landslide that this year we decided to take him out of the running, giving some new personalities a shot at the prize.

So, let's take a look at the contestants for this year's Donald Trump Honorary Most Annoying Money Personality contest:

Maria Bartiromo, CNBC's famed "Money Honey," isn't looking so sweet and spunky these days. She now seems a touch vampish as the apparent centerpiece in a Citigroup scandal that led to the ouster of exec Todd Thomson. Thomson might have earned the CEO spot recently vacated by Chuck Prince if he hadn't offered Bartiromo a spot on a Citi jet to fly to Asia to speak to customers.

Maria's journalistic ethics were called into question for accepting the junket, but CNBC, which nets plenty of advertising from Citi, glossed over the scandal. Criticism of Maria, however, helped raise the profile of CNBC's new sweetheart, Erin Burnett. In September, AOL's Money Face-Off found them virtually neck-and-neck among voters.

It's been three weeks since our Money Face-Off feature ran here at BloggingStocks and on AOL, offering you the opportunity to share who you though had the financial edge in a series of twenty head-to-head match-ups. So I thought I'd take another look and see how things have worked out.

It's hard to pick just one big winner. In terms of the largest lead over a rival, Ivanka Trump easily beats Paris Hilton with 89% of the vote. Others holding big leads over their opponents include Tiger Woods, Warren Buffett, Steven Spielberg, and Rupert Murdoch.

In terms of receiving the most votes, the clear leader is the Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart match-up, with just short of 150,000 votes. Other big vote getters were Tiger Woods vs. David Beckham, Rudy Giuliani vs. Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs. In terms of the liveliest discussions in the comments, the winners are Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart, Erin Burnett vs. Maria Bartiromo, and Bono vs. Angelina Jolie. Also check out the comments for the J.K. Rowling vs. J.R.R Tolkien, Tiger Woods vs. David Beckham, and Ivanka Trump vs. Paris Hilton posts.

As for the face-off posts here that got the most attention, the clear winner is Erin Burnett vs. Maria Bartiromo, with more than 13,000 hits. Lindsay Lohan vs. Britney Spears and Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart also attracted lots of readers.

Results for all the face-offs follow below, but keep in mind that the voting is still open. It's not too late to add your vote or let us know what you think.

It's been a week since our Money Face-Off posts ran here on BloggingStocks, and less than that since the Money Face-Offs were featured on the AOL welcome page, and the response has been terrific. Many of the face-off polls have had more than 50,000 votes, a couple of them approaching 100,000.

The biggest response came to the Oprah Winfrey vs. Martha Stewart match-up. So far, about 75 percent of respondents feel that Oprah is the more successful media magnate. Not that much surprise there, as Oprah's fans are legion. Interestingly, though, of the twenty-some comments the post has received, most of them are pro-Martha.

Another clear leader is Bill Gates over rival Steve Jobs. About three quarters of poll votes have gone his way, despite all the buzz recently about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and the popularity of its products. Maybe readers are just happy that Gates is stepping down. Let us know what you think.

Alan Greenspan seems to be everywhere these days, promoting his new book, including Comedy Central's The Daily Show and NPR's Fresh Air. In our match-up of the current and former Fed chairs, Ben Bernanke vs. Alan Greenspan, more than 70 percent of respondents have voted for Greenspan. Comments to the post are mixed, but seem to me to focus on Greenspan, whether pro or con.

This post is part of our Money Face-Offs feature. Let us know who you think comes out ahead in this head-to-head match-up, and check out our other Money Face-Off posts.

Celebrities -- they're more than superior human beings, they're money-making machines. If these celebrities were stocks, which would be the shrewd buy?

The shrewd, cantankerous veteran vs. the trash-talking but talented kid -- who would you put your money on?

The veteran would be George Steinbrenner, head of the New York Yankees since 1973. Steinbrenner made his nut in the family shipbuilding business when he bought out the American Ship Building Co. He was always an avid sports fan, even serving as a football coach at Northwestern and Purdue before returning to the business world. His first acquisition, however, the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball Association, left him broke. But his taste for the big leagues remained.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Internet pioneer, is not too happy with how the Internet's infrastructure is evolving. Cuban points out how "each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions 'dead and boring'. The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted."

Cuban points out that until bandwidth throughput to the home reaches far higher numbers, the Internet is dead, as the platform is not evolving fast enough to allow really smart people to come up with groundbreaking ideas. Throughput to the home has not increased more than 5mbs in the past 5 years, and few people's throughput is going to increase to more than 10mbs in the next 5 years, he noted.

GigaOm.com's Om Malik agrees, saying most of the smart people who orginally built out the Internet are now developing the content and not the infrastructure. All the smart people who built the equipment and the pipes are now building Web 2.0 products.

Malik goes on to say "the future, however, is in two-way, symmetrical Internet, where applications such as Kyte.TV and Sling Media can actually be put to use." Malik goes into much greater detail, which should be required reading for those who are investing in technology and the Internet. The blogs can be found at GigaOm.com and BlogMaverick.com. Both Cuban and Malik agree the Internet's infrastructure is due for a serious wake-up call.

It's been nearly 25 years since Donald Trump since Donald Trump bought the New Jersey Generals off the ill-fated USFL. Now another obnoxious mogul, Mark Cuban, is trying to start a new football league.

According to CNNMoney's Chris Isidore, "there are as many as three different groups looking at trying to start yet another league in the coming years. Two of the efforts would try to start leagues in the spring, when the NFL is in hibernation and some of the former leagues, like the USFL, briefly succeeded."

Bill Hambrecht and Cuban are looking at starting the UFL, and Cuban has argued on his blog that the league's collective bargaining agreement structure is :not designed for a competitive environment. Competition for top players, even if the UFL gets just a few, increases prices at the top end for all teams. Every star will get paid more, but still have to fit under the cap. That forces teams to use more low cost players, at the expense of signing the middle of the roster. That gives us access to quite a few very, very good NFL players ..."

Hambrecht has suggested that each team would be able to sell 1/3rd of its shares to the public through IPOs. So not only would the USFL provide opportunities for billionaires to own teams, but also average Joe's: Cool!

The always interesting, if not always sane, Mark Cuban has a fascinating idea for how to shore up the housing market on a long-term basis: Let people take them their houses public:

The rules could be very simple
1. The house is appraised by a company approved by the exchange that lists the houses.
2. "Shares" are set with a Par Value of 10pct of the appraised value. For a 100k dollar house, there are 10 shares potentially available. However at no point in time can more than 40pct of the "shares" in a home be sold. We dont want the opportunity for "hostile takeovers"
3. The price of the shares will of course be set by the market. In a hot market it will be set above par, in a tough market like today, it will sell below Par.
4. All Proceeds from the sale of shares MUST be used to pay down any debt on the home.

At first glance, this idea makes a ton of sense to me. It would be appeal to investors because it allows them an opportunity to profit from potential upside in the real estate market. I can certainly see REITs jumping into this kind of security if it ever comes to fruition. It would also provide a nice alternative to foreclosure for people who are close to losing their homes. It would also create a real-time market for homes that aren't for sale -- It would help people interested in the industry get an idea of what homes are worth.

Hopefully this novel idea will get the attention it deserves. I don't even like Mark Cuban, and I'm intrigued.

ShareSleuth, Mark Cuban's pet project (He calls it journalism) that seeks to uncover fraudulent companies has a new target: Orthopedic Development Corporation.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with ShareSleuth, the basic idea is this: Cuban hired a guy named Christopher Carey to do investigative research into companies that may be engaging in deception and then write about them on the website. The way that Cuban pays for it is where it gets a little controversial: Before the "picks" are posted on the website, Cuban is told about them and he shorts them. This is all disclosed on the website, and Cuban bills it as a new type of financial journalism.

While I don't have any problem with what Cuban and Carey are doing, I'm not so sure it should be called journalism: Journalism is paid for through the sale of publications and advertising. ShareSleuth is more reminiscent of the work of Manuel Asensio, an investor who put out research reports slamming stocks he was short.

The site received a fair amount of negative publicity, and its latest pick differs from its first two picks, Xethanol (AMEX: XNL) and Utek (AMEX: UTK). Orthopedic Development isn't public and, as such, Cuban has no financial stake in the company. The choice of a non-public company may be an effort to appease those who complained about the supposed conflict of interest in the earlier picks, but I'm not impressed.

The problem with exposing a non-public company is this: Who cares? There's no way that we can seek to profit from the expose, and it's just not very interesting. Public fiascoes are much more fun to follow.

Meanwhile, Mark Cuban is writing about his colonoscopy on his blog. That could possibly be less interesting than the piece on Orthopedic Development.

There's been a constant buzz circulating around the tech blogs regarding Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), content rights, money and video. Everyone knows,unless they're the Geico caveman, that Google holds the pole position in the Internet video race but very few will hazard to claim that they know what Google is intending to do. I've thrown my bet on the table and revealed my cards to claim that, in part, Google intends to virtually swallow the broadband video field lock, stock and barrel, and I believe they intend to do it via broadband over power lines (BPL).

Right now Google reminds me of a couple of kids stockpiling snowballs for a snowball fight after school. The distinction here is that the Google kids have been creating their tightly packed, white iced ammunition while the rest of the kids have spent the day in school. In other words, I think Google is in such a dominant position for waging video war that to even call the competition worthy of consideration might be a sad misnomer.

Here are some links to help you gain some perspective. This is Mark Cuban's blog and here's a small NextBlitz piece which one of Mark's commenter's links to. This link will give you some BBC input and here's an excellent video revenue piece courtesy of Mashable. If you read these provided links and follow some of their own additional attached links you will get some feel for what Internet video and Google via YouTube are up to.

We haven't even begun to view the first ledge of this new climb up the video mountain. There is so much strong movement going on behind the scenes that it is impossible to know exactly what the big players are up to. What I do know for sure is that Google is building and positioning for some broad, sweeping and powerful moves. With heavy investment in infrastructure and hardware support coupled with overtures geared towards revenue sharing and content availability, it seems obvious to me that Google will soon be grasping the concept of broadband streaming video and stroking it like a kitten in the palm of its hand.

If you're dismissive of the idea of Google stock value vaulting above $600 per share then I think you have some heavy reading to do. There is no one who is nearly keeping up with Google and there is no one who is even close to being as prepared as it is for wherever Internet video is now headed.

Voting continues for the Best & Worst of 2006, and there is no closer race right now than between Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's bumbling faux-journalist from Kazakhstan (as well as the motion picture named for him), and YouTube, everyone's favorite source for wacky foreign television commercials, drunken celebrity rants, and re-edited movie trailers, as the Up-and-Comer of 2006. Whether you think that Baron Cohen is brilliantly clever or just a cheap-shot artist, whether you believe YouTube offers hours of wholesome entertainment or is just an online version of America's Dumbest Home Videos, let your vote be counted.

The contest for Biggest Fall from Grace is not quite so close, but close enough that with a late surge, Mel Gibson could still overtake current frontrunner, President Bush. As some commenters have pointed out, Bush really didn't have far to fall as he'd already lost credibility before 2006. So if you think Gibson's arrest and drunken tirade have permanently harmed his career (despite the apparent popularity of Apocalypto), then lend your support to help him take the lead in this category.

Many of the close races are for second place. While Donald Trump leads in the Most Annoying Money Personality category, there is a virtual tie for the silver among Suze Orman, Jim Cramer, and Mark Cuban. In the Most Overpaid CEO contest, Barry Diller of IAC (NASDAQ:IACI) and Bob Nardelli of Home Depot (NYSE:HD) are battling for second place behind Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM). The Walton family has a slight edge over Martha Stewart for second place as the Tycoon We'd Send to the Poor House, and the Enron sentencing and the real estate market trail gas prices as the Money Story of the Year.

As we've learned from the past few national elections, every vote counts.

Voting for the Best & Worst of 2006 ends Christmas Eve, so don't wait too long. Results will be posted December 28.

For another view on Borat and YouTube, as well as many other of the nominees, also check out MarketWatch's Winners and Losers of 2006.