An Electroencephalogram For Carly Fiorina (HPQ)

Carly Fiorina still wants to know why she was dismissed as the head of Hewlett-Packard. Perhaps someone can arrange an EEG to check her brain function. While she was at HP, the stock lost half of its value. In fiscal 2001, 2002, and 2003 (year ending October) operating income fell apart. By contrast, Dell had three fairly solid years. The table have turned, but it wasn't on her watch.

Ms. Fiorina is using the current malaise at HP to flog her new book, spend time on "60 Minutes" and puzzle publicly about how the board could have push someone with her talent out the door. She may have missed the memo about the problems with the Compaq merger and the general disregard that the people under had for her management style. Her reaction is to say that the board members with enginerring backgrounds where parochial boobs who did not understand the company's overall strategy.

The HP board may have demonstrated that it is dysfunctional, but at least they made on right decision.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@247wallst.com. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.