You can still dump your shares on the last trading day of 2006 (12/29) in order to qualify for a tax loss and STILL get the divy as you will STILL be a shareholder on record on Jan 2....is that not correct?
It would have made more sense to push the divy date further out into the new year. If you brought back in just before the divy date, you are prevented from claming a tax loss due to the wash rule. So you would be better off holding your stocks into the divy date if you want the dividend.
I would have thought they would do a RYLP dividend instead of WWNG - caught me by surprise. Maybe that is the next PR - stock dividend of RYLP for BIGN shareholders. That just what we need...restricted useless dividend shares of RYLP, TYEG and WWNG to clutter up our trading accounts.