When an insanely wealthy family dumps hundreds of millions in stock of their own company, on lookers can't help but wonder: WTF? So when the family of Sumner Redstone — he the chieftan of Viacom and CBS, as well as movie theatre chain and holding company National Amusements — did just that on Monday (though now they say only $233m was chased in, not the $400m previously reported), rumors started flying it was because National Amusements was about to tank thanks to the incoming recession. Except: So not true!, says the movie theatre head Shari Redstone, daughter of Sumner.

Rather, the Redstones traded stock for dolla dolla bills as a "direct result of last week's historic financial crisis, which included the precipitous drop in value of CBS and Viacom stock." You know, and not because Shari has been doing a terrible job running National Amusements, and thus needed the cash to continue expanding that business' operations, which are low on funds.

And because Sumner is so sensitive about his daughter getting razzed by the press, even though he barely speaks to her after yet another falling out, he'll happily go along with any excuse she comes up with, even though he really can't stand the movie theatre biz she so insists on staying in.

[WSJ, alt; Photo: NYT]