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Comment by aurora72 | Hacker News Reader

It looks like he no longer sees a bright future, maybe.

Long term capital gains tax cuts sunset after 2010, right? My back of the envelope math is that if he waits one nanosecond after midnight on December 31st he gets to pay Uncle Sam an extra $65 million. I can think of things that I'd rather do with the money -- I'm guessing he can, too.

Incentives change behavior.

The change in long term capital gains tax is a drop in the bucket relative to the fact that there is no Generation Skipping Transfer Tax (GST) and a low Gift Tax in 2010. I strongly suspect this is cash to pay for gift tax on gifts to his children and grand children. That would be several hundred million in tax savings.

I'm guessing this will be a common trend in the next couple months.

Then maybe the company should award him $65 million in shares to compensate. Or he should take the hit -- he can certainly afford it. It's not a good time for Microsoft to have the CEO selling such a large stake. It looks like he's leaving and/or doesn't have confidence.

Him giving the appearance of leaving would not be a bad thing.

Without a successor it's not great. The devil you know...

The devil we know has managed to take a company so successful that people considered it a threat to the entire industry and bring it to the brink of irrelevance, kept alive only by a nearly automatic revenue stream from entrenched 20-year-old software. An honor-roll high school student stepping in for Ballmer would probably be met with guarded optimism.

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