Remember Wall Street analysts? Those are the people who go on tout TV and tell you to buy stocks regardless of what is happening to stock prices. The reason you should ignore them is that they get paid to make you buy stocks which generates commissions for their employer. If they issue 'sell' recommendations, they will scare people away from the market. And then there won't be any commissions to pay them.

This comes to mind courtesy of some fresh statistics on analysts' rate of issuing buy recommendations as stocks have plummeted in the last year. When stocks hit their peak in 2007, analysts put buy or hold calls on stocks 95% of the time. And last month, history's worst January, analysts urged you to sell a mere 5.9% of stocks. In 2008, as the market lost almost 40%, sells never outweighed buys or holds.

Wall Street analysts seemed to have thrown up their hands when it comes to fourth quarter earnings. Given the current economic environment, who can blame them?

Earnings estimates are almost useless. They have ranges big enough to drive a truck through. No, make that a train. I mean a tank. Imagine a large mode of transportation and you get the idea. My colleague Douglas McIyntyre recently argued "that has changed so much in the last two quarters that predictions have become hard to make and going into this earnings season the job may become impossible."

Take General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE). The conglomerate, which has been in Wall Street's dog house forever, is expected to post earnings of 52 cents for the fourth quarter. Or, the parent company of NBC might earn 36 cents. Everyone is sure that Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) is a basket case but exactly how screwed up the company is a matter of debate. Analysts are forecasting a losses of 47 cents to $1.14 per share.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) could earn anywhere from 18 cents and 33 cents. Analysts' estimates for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) range from a profit of 25 cent to a loss of 20 cents. Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), which recently announced it would fire 800 scientists, may earn anywhere between 55 cents and 63 cents.

This morning, investors were stunned to learn that Deutsche Bank analysts put out a note arguing that shares of General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) may be worthless in a year. Though the shares of the automaker are tumbling, this call shows once again that most analysts are a day late and a dollar short. Unfortunately, that's pretty typical.

Seriously, the troubles of GM and the rest of auto industry are well-known to anyone with a pulse. Auto sales are horrid. Democrats are pushing for a government bailout, which GM does not deserve. Retirees are getting squeezed. Yet to many analysts, this is a stock worth holding. According to Thomson/First Call, five rate GM's stock a Hold and one a Buy. There are four Underperforms and two Sells. That's shocking. If these analysts had any guts, they would all rate GM a Sell before it runs out of money.

The case at Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is similar. Only two analysts rate the struggling automaker a Sell. Seven rate it a Buy and one an Underperform. Maybe these geniuses don't read a newspaper or a website. Perhaps they are betting on a massive government bailout to help Detroit. Either way, they show that investors certainly aren't being helped by Wall Street's wisemen.

When Morgan Stanley's (NYSE: MS) veteran Internet analyst Mary Meeker estimated that overlay ads on YouTube could immediately add $4.8 billion in gross revenue and $720 million in net revenue to Google's Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), her one-time competitor Henry Blodget was puzzled.

Her figures were dramatically bigger than his estimate of $12 million to $360 million of gross revenue. As Blodget discusses in his Silcon Alley Insider blog, Meeker made a huge mathematical blunder. She didn't calculate her estimates using cost per thousands (CPM), the common measurement used in selling advertising. She just forgot to divide by a thousand. So instead of $4.8 billion, Meeker really meant to say $4.8 million and $720 million becomes $720,000.

These ads are insignificant to Google's bottom line.

Blodget, who is turning out to be more honest as a blogger than he was as an analyst, clearly is delighting in jabbing the Internet Queen Meeker. It's odd that no one on her team caught this mistake before it was published.

Investors need to remember that analysts often are wrong. When they guess too low, as Wall Street often has with Google, it's called an "upside surprise" and when they guess too high it's called a "disappointment." This is a game that Blodget knows very well.

Wall Street analysts rushed to the rescue of Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) after the computer maker reported that an internal accounting probe found evidence of misconduct.

Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora argued that Dell probably won't face delisting or criminal charges against current executives and Merrill Lynch's Richard Farmer says a major restatement is unlikely, according to the Associated Press.

Their optimism is understandable. Shares of Dell have plunged 20% this year and analysts will certainly look like a geniuses by urging investors to buy the stock when it's cheap. Analysts often come out with positive notes whenever one of their companies has bad news. Sometimes it helps the stock and other times it doesn't.

Dell shares are down in early trading. Investors are betting that things may get worse for Dell.

After all, Dell is losing marketshare to Hewlett-Packard Co. (NASDAQ: HPQ). I almost forgot to mention that it's delayed its 10-K, which is never a good sign.

My colleague Georges Yared wrote earlier today that it was "absolutely amazing" that Dell's shares have held up at their current level. I agree. But even the most aggressive growth investor avoids companies with accounting issues like plutonium. Fund manager Mike Green of Benham & Green Capital Management , who owns Dell shares, told Bloomberg News, "I want to find out what's going on with the accounting. I want to see it in black and white."

As of 1:42 this afternoon, MSFT is down 11% - that's a whopping $31 billion in market capitalization in one day - to $24.24. One of the commenters to my post last night suggests that "we all just get out of all stocks and then "all stupid analysts can be fired and work in the fields with the Mexican farm workers, because that's what they deserve !!"

While that makes me laugh uproariously with my buddies at the coffee shop, I really don't blame the analysts here. It's not like Microsoft has really given them precise figures to consider. And, in my opinion (and I'd argue, the opinion of those analysts, themselves), MSFT management strategies are murky at best. The Goldman Sachs analyst in last night's earnings call said it best, "It sounds like you're building a Google or Yahoo! inside the company." They're spending a few billion dollars more than expected (and, more than last year) on "cost of sales" and they're telling us that all that money is being spent on increased Xbox 360 costs. I don't think so. And neither does Wall Street.

Chris Liddell isn't going to tell us what's really going on, and my guess is that Softie is building, deliberately and at great developer expense, proprietary software to do what all their competitors are doing. They've already spent a ton on their own ad serving platform - is that only the tip of the iceberg? The answer, I think, is yes. What do you think should be done about the 11% drop in market cap? And are you considering this a buying opportunity? Or are you run, running as fast as you can?