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IBM Hides the Bodies, Eyes US Government Billions
theodp writes "As his company was striving to hide the bodies of its laid-off North American workers, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano stood beside President Barack Obama and waxed patriotic: 'We need to reignite growth in our country,' Palmisano said. 'We need to undertake projects that actually will create jobs.' While Sam positions IBM to get a slice of the $825 billion stimulus pie, Big Blue is quietly cutting thousands of jobs and refusing to release the numbers or locations, arguing that SEC disclosure rules don't apply since the US job cuts are immaterial in its big global picture. The layoffs included hundreds in East Fishkill, coming early in the year after NY taxpayers paid IBM $45 million not to cut additional jobs in East Fishkill in 2008. Some are questioning whether IBM incentives are worth the cost."
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
...they're so disorganized and flat-out dishonest with their employees that I say screw giving them any incentives, stimulus, or any other kind of special help. They need none.
All IBM has done since Gerstner is coast, layoff, reorg, and outsource. No significant new technology, major divestitures (heck, we sold off our entire networking arm to AT&T). The first thing Palmissano did in his video address after taking over as CEO is tell sales "don't let the engineers tell you no". Great idea - it led to vaprous announcements, selling technology we couldn't produce, and atrophied all of our internal systems, investment, and talent. Growth targets are consistently at bubble levels to ensure no one gets reasonable bonuses, and in the lead up to the firings in Fishkill managers were told to downrate employees on their PBC's to limit severance payments.
And no, I wasn't one of the ones laid off. If I had a better nest egg I might welcome it, freeing me from that blasted place. In the meantime, I have a family to support...
The automotive "bailout" (it wasn't only GM) was in the form of $18 Bn low interest loans that have to be repaid unlike the bank's $700 Bn or this $850 Bn pork barrel. This country has a fucked up sense of priorities that way.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
*ding ding ding*
I work at IBM - trust me when I say it is in fact a soulless corp. Not evil, just soulless. We don't even need money - we had a good year in 2008, even in the 4th quarter. Hell, I'm even getting a bonus from last year we did so well! We sure as hell don't need taxpayer money.
IBM is one of the largest corporations on earth. It employs around 400,000 workers world-wide (with about 40% in the US). IBM laying off 4,000 people is not the same as Microsoft laying off 5,000 people considering it's 1% of IBM's work force and close to 6% of Microsoft's (they have about 90,000 employees).
I can't remember a year I've been at IBM where there hasn't been layoffs to this degree. Furthermore, a strategic cost cutting plan was announced well over a year ago that aimed to raise the earnings-per-share by reducing overhead.
So a relatively small layoff like this was probably going to happen anyway regardless of the economic situation. That's why IBM is not reporting it specially.
With acquisitions and new hiring, unless your company is growing in size (and IBM isn't), you have to layoff people to make up the difference.
The claim that their German subsidiary was taken over by the state is a little shaky; Not only were the same management left in place but they continued to report to Thomas Watson in New York throughout the war. Most importantly, after the war they recovered the profits made selling and maintaining punch card machines for the holocaust.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
You can find historic examples of how to handle a financial like this one. In the early 90-ies Sweden experience a housing bubble similar to what has happened in the US. The state bailed out the banks, but unlike the US the state also took control over the banks. Here is NYT article about it. As a result the Swedish economy bounced back and most, if not all, of the money used to rescue the banks have been returned to the taxpayers. This was done by a right-wing government. This is in contrast to Japan where the Japanese government did nearly nothing in similar situation a few years before. Japans is still suffering the consequences of the resulting recession.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Roads are funded by gasoline taxes, so a cut in income tax would not affect them at all.
Police waste a lot of time chasing non-violent criminals. If they stopped bothering people smoking marijuana while watching the Superbowl (a "crime" that harms absolutely no one except the smoker), they'd have LOTS of resources to go after the actual thieves and murderers.
Schools are funded by school taxes, and therefore a cut in income tax would not affect them at all.
And finally:
Most government agencies, in my own government experience at the FAA, have 60-65% of workers who sit-around doing nothing all day long, except surfing the net. They could easily layoff those persons (same way a corporation trims the fat), and still get the same amount of work done.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
it is corporate welfare and it has always been a no gain practice.
Last I checked, the Japanese had the highest amount of US dollar holdings. Or did the PRC suddenly gobble up the extra few hundred billion that were desperately necessary?
Printing money is not a smart idea, but at least it's an improvement. I know my money has some value, unlike batering, where you're never quite sure what you'll end up with.
Sorry, that isn't true. Most of the money we've given has been with the Cash-Equity formula, where we give them money in exchange for equity in their company. Either that, or we gave them high, not low, interest loans.
"Every other bailout was a free handout to the company (including AIG TWICE!)"
One, the Feds were given an 80% stake in AIG. In exchange for that 80% stake, we gave them the right to loan 85 billion dollars at a rate of Libor+850(which is higher than most credit cards). The second "bailout", was when we extended their credit line.
The automakers never approached those terms.
Yeah, 'cause our roads are in such great shape now,
They're paved, aren't they?
the cops are doing a bang-up job,
At least you have cops
we're producing public-school Einsteins at the rate of E=mc^2
An energy is not a rate, though I guess you're proving your own point.
and by golly were going to eat to the bottom of this jar of salmonella-laced peanut butter if it kills us.
Good luck with that. In your world without any taxes you would probably be eating tainted food for real.
:x
This is in contrast to Japan where the Japanese government did nearly nothing in similar situation a few years before
Regarding Japan's Lost Decade, I suggest you review the data. Here is what actually happened:
1) Bad initial monetary policy, the Bank of Japan actually boosted the discount rate from 4.75 percent to 6 percent in August 1990 and held it at that level until June 1991. This was a similar mistake to the monetary contraction by the US Fed from 1929 to 1933.
2) Japan engaged in large stimulus packages - outlays on big projects from 6.5% of GDP in 1990 to 8.3% in 1996. Most went towards largely toward unproductive public works projects and credits to small businesses that were no longer economically viable ("zombie companies"). Sound familiar? These did not do much to help the situation evidently.
3) In 1997 the Japanese government raised its consumption tax from 3 to 5 percent, which lead to an increase in deflation in 1998.
4) To end the "Lost Decade", the Bank of Japan switched during the spring of 2001 to a policy of quantitative easing and PM Junichiro Koizumi was undertook aggressive measures to recapitalize Japan's banks, which were still heavily burdened by nonperforming loans. (The latter is what TARP was supposed to do).