Some eclectic reading for those of you in the mood for some thought-provoking non-news-driven stuff:

• Should stare decisis doctrine apply to U.S. Supreme Court's doctrine of stare decisis? (SSRN)
• Top ten tech trends, according to VCs, plus some amusing riffing on Steve Jurvetson's opacity (Savitz)
• 19th century whaling as a model for oil depletion and price volatility (TOD)

Nicely direct and non-nuanced letter from Carl Icahn to the malingering Yahoo board this morning. Carl minces no words, telling them that they have failed in their responsibilities to shareholders, and that he has been urged by some of those shareholders to do something about it.

You can find the letter and the list of proposed board nominees here, including Mark Cuban, the purchase of whose Broadcast.com marked the first stage of Yahoo's stock peaking in the public markets. Wonder if Carl has read Cuban''s "how to wax Google" post?

I thought it would be fun to compare Yahoo's board, pre- and post- the Icahn proposed slate today. Here they are via some relevant metrics.

Essentially, Icahn has put up a board of investors, eliminating insiders as well as the one woman on the board. It looks like the age skews slightly older on the Icahn board, but that is admittedly helped by the presence of Icahn and absence of the younger Yang.

You can play the home game too, of course, with Yahoo's current board and proposed board.

One of the questions investors in early-stage companies -- both private and public -- often ask is this: What if the founder gets hit by a bus? It is, of course, an investor's way of saying, "How much of this company's continuing success requires this man/women at the helm?"

Most investors skew toward believing that founders of successful companies matter a great deal. A new paper, however, makes the argument that founders are largely expendable. By looking at what happens when founders die, the author concludes that founders are good for ideas, but dispensable for managing the company -- even early in its life:

I analyze the causal effect of the founder for firms in their infancy by using variation in the occurrence of founder death. Both cross-sectional and within-firm estimates suggest that founder death has only a slight effect on firm performance, as measured by firm survival, profitability, or growth. I interpret this as the founder being substitutable even in a firm's infancy and that the main function of the founder is to discover new opportunities and setting up the firm rather than managing it. [Emphasis mine]

Source:

Must amusing take so far on the proposed Icahn board slate for Yahoo comes from Breakingviews this morning. The folks there have done it as a winking take on the George Clooney flick, Ocean's Eleven, with Icahn in the starring role. The semi-serious point, of course, is that Icahn's board nominees are doing this is as a quick caper: They want to make their money and get out quick.

I would post an excerpt, but the Breakingviews site has an irritating feature that prevents copying of even portions of stories.

Update: Jeff at BV has helpfully allowed me to repost some text here:

Consider the squad:
   * The Loudmouth, Icahn: An experienced loudmouth activist whose success measured in billions of dollars makes him hard to ignore.
   * The Boss, Frank Biondi: a former movie studio and Viacom boss. His operational experience in the business could help Yahoo in its cooperation with content partners.
   * Snake Oil, aka Mark Cuban: An entrepreneur with a history of creating companies that he then sells for far more than they are worth to sucker corporations. Cuban sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7bn at the height of the dotcom bubble - useful experience for selling Yahoo to Microsoft.
   * The Figleaf, Lucian Bebchuk: The Harvard Law School professor is one of the foremost experts on corporate governance and a strong advocate for aligning executive pay to performance. Shareholders rejecting a seat for Bebchuk would be protesting motherhood and apple pie.

My friend Doug Kass is calling a near-term "Trump top" in oil prices:

Trump waxed enthusiastically about oil on "Squawk Box today," saying that real estate is not the business to get into as a young man -- now it is energy.

And oil is off $4 from its peak prices, although that could change with word of an explosion and fire in Nigeria today.

Does the Sprott IPO issue today mark a kind of energy/resources market top, much the same way that Blackstone et al., going public did the same thing for private equity? After all, when a highly successful energy/resources fund manager decides that he can make more money being public and decides to sell shares to the public, you have to ask yourself: Should I be buying what he is selling? 

More here.

Apparently Yang Disease is spreading at Yahoo. Recall, this is a company that seemingly thinks that, despite being a struggling outfit presented with a 70% price premium over its then trading price,  it is the one that gets to set the terms of the takeover discussion.

The latest evidence , Yahoo's chair Bostock has joined the anti-acquisition fray tonight with a meandering and illogical letter that repeats all sorts of silly claims, like that Yahoo didn't know it had been offered $33 by Microsoft; that it gets to set the terms; that Microsoft didn't respond in a timely way; that Yahoo's board has handled this appropriately, etc.

Sheer madness.