At first glance, this seemed puzzling: break up OfficeMax? I'm all for corporate streamlining, but what does that mean here? Spin off the aisle that sells paper clips?

It turns out that OfficeMax is actually the combination of the office products retailer and Boise Cascade, a paper and forest products company. I'd bet that once again, delusions of synergy have dragged yet another company into lethargy and incompetence. The entity is just too big now, so no wonder one of its largest shareholders wants to break it up and unleash value.

Yes, office product retailers sell paper. So what? As Cablevision learned, just because you own what's on TV and the infrastructure by which the content is delivered to your TV, doesn't mean you should also sell the TV.