See What You've Done, Steve?

Apple has $51 billion in cash, and Steve Jobs had better spend some of it soon. Because people are starting to lose their minds.

See: Delusional investors in Sony, who bid up shares today over a rumor that Apple will blow its wad on the company.

Where did that crazy rumor come from? From this innocuous Barron’s column, where Eric Savitz throws out Sony’s name as a possible Apple purchase, alongside Disney and Adobe.

Now, Barron’s is an excellent publication (it is also owned by News Corp.’s Dow Jones, which owns this site), and Eric is an excellent writer. But perhaps something got lost in translation, because anyone who looked at the piece for a second would see that Eric was simply engaging in the time-honored tradition of “making wild guesses about Apple’s plans.”

Or, in Eric’s words: “That was pure speculation. Yeesh.”

I’m just glad there isn’t a public market (yet) for Facebook shares.