Inevitably at some stage during the dying embers of a year, a list of blunders is compiled by somebody and published for all to chuckle over. One of the lists, as on CNNMoney.com and Fortune provides some not so funny ones that happened in the business world.

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft fame must be thanking his stars and anything else that Yahoo turned him down when he offered $44.6 billion in a 61% premium bid. Any guesses what Yang, who turned him down, is feeling now in retrospect? Ten months down the line the offer was three times the amount of what Yahoo shares were fetching at year-end. Some very sour shareholders methinks.

Those two dumb moments are only half way down the list of the 21 dumbest moments in business in 2008 as per this list. Leader of the pack is the arrival on private corporate jets of Detroit car CEO’s en route to Congress in the quest for a multi-billion dollar bailout. And number 2 on the list? The 10hr car drive taken by same CEO’s for the next hearing.

Then there was the story about Steve Job’s death, the Bloomberg News releasing its obituary well ahead of the event. At least Steve Jobs is alive today to enjoy the wonderful chuckle inducing news that Microsoft’s Zune is having some difficulties.

30GB Zunes are tripping out over an internal calendar software application that is not coping with the end of a leap year. Blue screens anybody? Trying to win the anti-iPod award is not helped along by massive operating system failure. Oh how the Apple fanmultitude is laughing at this.

Mostly though, the dumbest business moments deal with people’s reaction to the global or regional economic meltdown. As an example remember McCain, the Republican party’s US presidential candidate, pontificating that the US economy’s fundamentals were strong?  He ventured this nugget of insight just days before the whole pack of cards came tumbling down.

Then there was Fannie Mae CEO Dan Mudd stating that his company would be feasting on weakened competition in the mortgage market even as his own company was suffering mounting credit losses and asset write offs. Talk about fiddling while Rome is burning.

The list goes on. Joining these dumbest moments is a veritable smorgasbord of preposterous statements, analytical garbage and soothsaying dished up by a who’s who of Economists who stuck their necks out during 2008. In this manner their contributing to the panic in people’s minds was substantial.

The consequence of this? The consumer has reacted by shutting his money pocket with a loud snap. In a consumer driven economy such a loud snap sounds the death knell. The business world will not remember 2008 with much affection.

But then we consumers, the ordinary people, are blessed with a ludicrous amount of faith and hope that everything will work out in the end. And in that vein, I wish everybody a happy New Year and everything you wish for yourself and more!