“Are the board and management of eBay Inc. (EBAY) clueless or crazy for electing to trigger a $3 billion non-tax charge for a potential future tax bill should it decide to repatriate $9 billion of its overseas cash,rather than tap the pliant bond market for any immediate domestic spending needs?”

It says many analysts are mystified – which is a clear testament to the ever-growing banality of offshore. But it ends on a more heartening note:

“Perhaps the crazy thing is not so much eBay’s decision, but the fact that in the face of U.S. tax law, so many companies have made tax-minimization a key business objective that everyone is alarmed when a big corporation considers voluntarily paying what it owes.”

We would concur. Unless there is some deeper scheme behind this that we’re not aware of, we should applaud this company for doing it the way it should be done.