And who knows? Maybe John Chambers, Steve Ballmer and Brian Roberts will indeed say something important today and tomorrow at Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference. Chrysler’s Robert Nardelli is speaking too. He might have something newsworthy to say.

But you are unlikely to read about it.

That’s because there’s no press allowed at the private equity shop’s annual conference, which starts this afternoon at New York’s Plaza Hotel.

Or rather, there’s some press at the event. But they’ll be on stage. And they won’t be telling their readers and listeners what they saw and heard.

CNBC’s David Faber, Becky Quick and Maria Bartiromo, for instance, will be moderating panels over the next few days. So will the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin. And network TV news bigshots Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos and Brian Williams will answer questions themselves (Portfolio’s Matt Cooper will be moderating that one).

Am I crabby because I asked (nicely) and couldn’t get in myself? Nah. It’s Quadrangle’s event, and they can run it any way they want. But it does look like a pretty good gathering of worthies. Maybe I’ll park myself in the Plaza’s lobby and see if I can bump into some of them.

Want to join me? Here’s the agenda for next two days:

Tuesday 11/11
2:00 PM WELCOME
Joshua L. Steiner (Quadrangle)

ONE ON ONE WITH JOHN CHAMBERS (Cisco)
Moderated by Jim Citrin (Spencer Stuart)

WHO DO YOU TRUST: INFORMATION AND NEWS IN AN  OPEN WORLD
Tom Glocer (Thomson Reuters), Nancy McKinstry (Wolters Kluwer) and Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook)
Moderated by David Faber (CNBC)

ALL ABOUT WIRELESS
Jean-Bernard Lévy (Vivendi), Naguib Sawiris (Orascom Telecom) and Ben Wolff (Clearwire)
Moderated by Steven Rattner

4:15 PM BREAK

GOING IT ALONE IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
Philippe Dauman (Viacom), Charlie Ergen (EchoStar) and Robert Kotick (Activision)
Moderated by Becky Quick (CNBC)

GLOBAL E-COMMERCE: $500 BILLION AND GROWING
Barry Diller (IAC) and Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten)
Moderated by Steve Hasker (McKinsey)

6:15 PM COCKTAIL RECEPTION
Grand Ballroom Foyer
The Plaza

Wednesday 11/12
8:30 AM WELCOME
ONE ON ONE WITH STEVE BALLMER (Microsoft)
Moderated by Ken Auletta (The New Yorker)

INNOVATION AND THE NEXT BIG IDEA
Jean-François Decaux (JC Decaux) Robert Stephens (Geek Squad founder?) and Jim Wiatt (William Morris)
Moderated by Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times)

A CONVERSATION WITH SAM ZELL (Equity Group, Tribune Co.)
Moderated by Joanne Lipman (Portfolio)

10:00 AM BREAK

COOP-ER-TITION: A CONVERSATION WITH PETER CHERNIN (News Corp.) AND BRIAN ROBERTS (Comcast)
Moderated by Ken Auletta

REBUILDING A BRAND FROM THE TOP DOWN
Dan Hesse (Sprint) and Robert Nardelli (Chrysler)
Moderated by Maria Bartiromo

NOON Concluding Luncheon
CAMPAIGN 2008: IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AND BEHIND THE SCENES
Katie Couric (CBS), George Stephanopoulos (ABC) and Brian Williams (NBC)
Moderated by Matt Cooper (Portfolio)

[Image Credit: PinkMoose]

Here are two pieces this week, from the multitude of them about the continuing turmoil at Yahoo (YHOO), that really stand out for me.

Both encapsulate the dicey situation that the troubled Internet company finds itself in now–which is to say very dicey.

One from The Wall Street Journal’s Dennis K. Berman–titled “Who Played It Worse: Microsoft or Yahoo?”–comes to the only conclusion: Both.

Wrote Berman: “Never have so few failed so many for so much at stake.”

Money quote on Yahoo, referring to its ad-outsourcing deal with Google (GOOG):

Consider the state of Yahoo now: Thrust into the arms of Google, it now is forced to admit it can’t develop the technology to compete head-on with the Googleplex. It is as if IBM were to admit it could no longer build a big server, or Toyota were to give up on the Corolla and start selling Honda Civics.”

But a more devastating indictment of Yahoo and its CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang comes from New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, called “Oh, Jerry, It’s No Longer Your Baby.”

While Nocera, whom I know and admire, is not saying anything new about Yang’s glacial management of the company and Yahoo’s boneheaded handling of the Microsoft (MSFT) situation, his bracing prose in the form of a poison pen letter sums it all up perfectly.

Wrote Nocera, as he shoved the shiv in: “I haven’t seen this much contempt for shareholders since Robert Nardelli [pictured here] ran Home Depot.”

After recounting the sins against Yahoo shareholders, here’s the money quote:

Jerry, you’re a billionaire because people all over the world bought your stock, and trusted you to do right by them. That’s the compact you make when you take a company public: you get to be really rich, but in return, you have an obligation to do everything you can to ensure that shareholders get a healthy return on their investment. It doesn’t matter that you would like Yahoo to remain independent, or that you can’t stand Microsoft. Your feelings aren’t supposed to get in the way of your fiduciary duty.

A takeover by Microsoft was your last, best hope of rewarding your long-suffering shareholders. Now that opportunity is gone. It says here Mr. Icahn is not going to go as gently into the night as Mr. Ballmer did–and if I were a betting man, I would be taking odds that your days as Yahoo’s CEO are numbered.

It’ll be better for everyone to have someone in that role who understands who he’s supposed to be working for. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I would–but much more on that diciest of subjects for Yahoo next.