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Arrested IBM Exec Goes MIA On the Web
theodp writes "Among those charged in the largest hedge-fund insider trading case in US history was IBM Sr. VP Robert W. Moffat, the heir apparent to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and the guy behind Big Blue's 'workforce rebalancing' and the sale of IBM's PC unit to Lenovo. IBM's not talking about the incident, but it's interesting that Moffat's bio is MIA at IBM.com ('Biography you tried to access does not exist.'), and his Smarter Planet video can no longer be found ('This video has been removed by the user.') at IBM's YouTube Channel. Do you need approval from the Feds before tidying up after someone who's under investigation? BTW, if stories and comments appearing in the Times Herald-Record and Poughkeepsie Journal are any indication, Moffat may want to avoid a local jury trial. 'I have talked to a few IBMers today, and there seems to be a lot of cheering in the halls of IBM over his arrest,' said Lee Conrad of Alliance@IBM."
Prison rape isn't funny.
Anytime such grandiose outsourcing and/or workforce cutting schemes are created, you can suspect that a psychopathic suit just got an idea how to look busy and useful.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
No what's funny is that a nation which is already joking about his prison rape before he's even been found guilty runs around the world trying to impose their view of human rights on everyone else.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
That's so textbook corporate psychopathy. When will people learn?
After they're caught.
At which time they will wax sympathetic, not admit any guilt and promise not to do it again.
All the while crossing their toes.
When a culture celebrates and rewards parasitic behavior, it's no wonder the psycho's are winning.
***How much time will the billionaire serve do you suppose? I predict he "affords" his justice and walks. Worst case, no admission of wrongdoing and 18 months of "hard" club-fed time for perjury or jaywalking.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
We're coasting on the accomplishments of our ancestors. Unfortunately, their America is not our America.
As a person who still remembers (late stages of) communism, those fat & lazy corporations resemble old (long dead) industry in communist states. So many things look exactly the same. High rank executives chasing phantom "results" just to get their bonuses, causing so much mayhem in the process. Middle rank managers who are interested in just blindly executing orders from their bosses and have to be clueless crooks to succeed, low level worker drones interested in setting up another "Q&A cell" to do some paperwork or being a salesman without any responsibility instead of doing something real.
For me, the main distinction between capitalism and communism (corporatism) is ownership. In capitalism the owner runs the business and risks its own property in the process - thus the owner is interested in well-being in the long run. In communism (or corporatism) the communist comisar (corporate executive) runs business that does not belong to him, does not risk anything and is interested in skimming some of it via bonus (for posting cooked results) or some form of fraud.
Using ownership distinction it is easy to explain why some corporations (Google, even Microsoft) are doing well (and have clean vision) while others (pre-Gerstner IBM, HP after Compaq merge) have no vision except next quarter results. Apple is a blatant example - founded by Jobs & co, then taken over by some classic corporate drones (and nearly killed in the process), then taken back by Jobs and regained all its shine (and some more). This also explains why large corporations like to merge creating larger (more poorly managed) ones - the larger (and less transparent), the more occasions for upper management to steal something.