CNBC broke the news within the last hour. Plenty of people have speculated that this was going to happen for months and months.

If anything, not giving Johnson's reworking of the JC Penney a chance to work over time will end up being their next-biggest mistake to signaling that JCP really doesn't know what it's doing by re-hiring the guy who got them in bad shape in the first place. Their stock fluctuation in the short term, I suspect, will be indicative of the long-term trend.

The best things Johnson's overhaul brought to JC Penney were the streamlining of price structure (eliminating 70 different "Clearance" racks) and making checkout possible in less than 10 minutes. I started shopping there again. Maybe he belonged at Apple in the first place. I hear there's a job opening.

Everything old really isn't new again.