NYT: IBM PC Division Sold To Advance China's Goals 210
theodp writes "Back in 2005, Wharton's Michael Useem speculated that IBM's sale of its PC Division to Lenovo was more about ingratiating Big Blue with the Chinese government than getting top dollar for the assets. 'Government relationships are key in China,' Useem explained. Now, a NY Times article on outgoing IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano seems to confirm that Useem's analysis was spot-on. From the NYT article: 'In 2004, I.B.M. sold its PC business to Lenovo of China. Mr. Palmisano says he deflected overtures from Dell and private equity firms, preferring the sale to a company in China for strategic reasons: the Chinese government wants its corporations to expand globally, and by aiding that national goal, I.B.M. enhanced its stature in the lucrative Chinese market, where the government still steers business.'"
News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Insightful)
For once, a CEO thought beyond the next quarterly report. Be careful what you complain about.
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Funny)
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that, at this point, China is fascist, not communist.
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism depends heavily on the people picking up the slack being within striking distance of the slackers.
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Where as in capitalism, the slackers just run the whole show.
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A commune (despite its name) / cooperative / partnership is a completely different beast from Comunism, as proposed by Marx. The most relevant difference is that the products of the commune / cooperative / partnership are sold in a capitalist market. While in Comunism, there would be no market at all.
Yes, in local initiatives comunism works, and often is the best choice. When you try to push it further, it fails.
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It's the essence of capitalism that you can slack off providing you have enough money and don't do really stupid things with it.
Everyone in favor of sending the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Charlie Sheen, and Britney Spears to a Communist country say Aye!
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Trek? (Score:2)
Everyone in favor of sending the Kardashians
Would this include Andrew J. Robinson [wikipedia.org] and Marc Alaimo [wikipedia.org]?
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Under communism as Marx thought it, everyone works according to their ability: you don't have the choice to slack off by allowing your capital to "work for you".
No, instead you have the choice to slack off and let productive members of society provide for your needs.
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You might just want to holster that big fat ego for a moment. From a purely objective view, that shit cleaner risks his life to prevent outbreaks of typhus, disentery, and a whole raft of sanitation related horrors that have haunted humanity for thousands of years. He may have a nasty job, but you better believe its a critical and vital task.
You on the other hand spend your day scribbling on paper. Unless your research leads to the immediate end of disentery forever, my vote goes to the shit cleaner, becaus
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>Communism has existed. In communes. It can actually work, if you just want to run a village. It just scales really, really poorly.
If only there was some sort of magical machines to help us scale and decentralize information and decisions, so that utopia could be administered without hierarchy and more efficiently than a bunch of mentally ill despots/tyrants could muster a hundred years ago...
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"The computer is your friend. Trust the computer."
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Fancy machines don't help when a problem is structurally inherent.
Communism's primary issue is not that it scales poorly, although it does. Communism's primary issue is that it works against basic human nature. It failed even in villiage-sized experiments back in the early colonization days of America. The Pilgrims tried their own brand of it and it failed miserably. And they had religious pressure to help the system along! IE: It was God's Will, they were building a new Jerusalem. WAY more pressure
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No [sail1620.org]
Essentially, the settlers in Plymouth Plantation were all working for investors back in London. It was the corporation, not the settlers themselves, who allotted the land. They had debts to pay, and sometimes providing a return on investment came before luxuries like food.
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Interesting)
For one thing, it fails the common-sense test. In a colony on the edge of starvation, so you really think people are going to just laze around and not bother raising crops just because someone else might get to share them too? People are not that stupid, and most of them dislike starving to death. Like all really good pieces of propaganda, it is half true. The Plymouth colony was indeed founded on an initial seven-year collective-property system - that was a standard practice at the time, a simple practical way to deal with the extreme supply shortages in a new colony. After all, you can't run a farm if the owner of the plough refuses to let another use it, and you can't hope to build individual houses for every colonist before winter sets in and kills everyone. It was usual to share all non-trivial property long enough to get everyone settled in, houses built, tools made and industry established. Similarily, there was an initial food shortage. The mistake is in attributing the latter to the former. The actual reason was rather less interesting: European farmers, most of them not even very experienced, with unfamiliar crops and weather far worse than anticipated.
Look at the numbers. The great die-off was in the winter of 1620-1621, during which 45 died from a population of 102. That is the event of which your account speaks. Yet the ship only arrived in december 1620 - if, as you claim, the problems were caused by the use of a temporary collective ownership leading to a lack of hard work than the effects should not have been felt until the following harvest, rather then immediatly upon arrival. Unless you wish to suggest that people were standing around in the snow refusing to build housing because they wouldn't fully own it afterwards, which strikes me as unrealistic.
And of later events? Wikipedia has some figures on the growth of the colony:
December 1620, 99
April 1621, 50 (The first winter of which we spoke)
November 1621, 85
July 1623, 180
May 1627, 156
As you can see, once that first winter passed the colony florished - growth was rapid, and no food shortage around. In fact, this was a florishing economy: In november 1921, almost exactly one year after the arrival of the Mayflower, the Fortune arrived with more settlers - and departed with a trade goods exported to pay off the investors who funded the settlement. Doesn't sound like a communist nightmare to me.
The final damning line comes from your own testament: "The failure of the experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years." Several years. Yet the colony was already passed the intitial winter deaths and running successful exports after only a single year from the arrival of the mayflower - which means that, by the account you use, that great success was achieved *before* the abolition of collective ownership!
So while socialism may not have been the perfect solution for Plymouth, it wasn't an utter disaster either. It worked, for a time, well enough to get them established, growing and exporting.
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Clearly your grasp of economics is as poor as your grasp of history. Here's an important bit of useful information. Look for the truth with an open mind. If you're simply cherry picking information to justify your point of view, you'll be doomed never to see what it actually so. Here's the hint, If you belong to one of those families of ideologues that continually submits some variation of the same old rehashed piece of ideological tripe, whose origin it is determined makes it of questionable value or verac
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:4, Interesting)
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The day fast food is run by robots such that my lunch was assembled entirely by machine, I will dance in the streets. I don't care about the lost jobs. I don't care about economic meltdown.
I care that I will actually GET what I effing ORDER at the drive through!
Vending machines (Score:2)
The day fast food is run by robots such that my lunch was assembled entirely by machine, I will dance in the streets.
Vending machines exist. Perhaps an ideal model for an automated fast food joint might be based on frozen entrees, not unlike those sold in a supermarket, in containers designed for automated microwave preparation. But you'd still need some sort of attendant to make sure that the customers eating in the dining room don't cause trouble.
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Wal-Mart is often cited as a real-life model of a de facto model national economy. Algorithms determine supply and demand so waste is in the single percentages.
All it needs is advances in robotics enough to get them out of the factory and behind the till at McDonalds.
They've installed machines at our Jack in the Box to take orders - totally Idiocracy style - "would you like an order of
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:4, Insightful)
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Whether they realize it or not, it is a lot of what OWS is about.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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On the other hand if they keep poisoning themselves the whole thing is self-limiting.
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Actually I'd say that's true of all "isms" including capitalism as we see what a corrupt mess we have in DC now.
Except of course the fact that the corrupt mess we have in DC now is not the product of capitalism at all. It is the product of attempting to centrally plan the economy (by whatever name you choose to call it--fascism, socialism, communism, "crony capitalism", or something else). Capitalism (as most people use the term) is the opposite of a centrally planned economy.
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Hey, they helped a communist tyranny.
How does this sale help Apple?
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Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a book by Roger L. Martin called Fixing The Game [apple.com] which argues that the problem with large businesses today is that they are focused on the expectation market--maximizing shareholder value--as opposed to the real market--making good products and increasing customer satisfaction. For example, Enron was so focused on shareholder value that they manipulated revenues to increase stock price, while Apple was so focused on products that Steve Jobs was infamously dismissive the importance of his company's shareholders and joked that the one thing that kept him up at night was shareholder meetings.
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I linked to the iTunes Preview web page because the full description is right at the top unlike Amazon, ya psycho.
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For once, a CEO thought beyond the next quarterly report. Be careful what you complain about.
Hey, he's only following the example set by the US government.
The only difference is that the US government is selling the entire nation to the Chinese in the form of borrowing/debt to finance out of control spending on programs designed to produce citizens dependent on government for survival in order to help insure election/reelection with promises of more "free stuff", while simultaneously increasing their power over the populace in general through increasing control of ever more aspects of everyday life
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoa whoa whoa, first off, IBM did this years before Obama spent all the money on companies which the people needed to exist or they would totally rely on the government for money and help. This of course after his predecessor cut taxes on the rich, made banks give loans to people who couldn't pay them off, oh and that little "war" we had over in the Middle East, which we are still in even if we aren't in Iraq some what, 10 years later? China only owns us on paper, and what are they gunna do about it
I have to ask, are you a hipster Strat? You have that I like it, but only if I'm the only one that likes it
I think IBM did this so they would get kickbacks from the corrupt Chinese government. It's in the article and in the blurb: "I.B.M. enhanced its stature in the lucrative Chinese market, where the government still steers business."
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoa whoa whoa, first off, IBM did this years before Obama...
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the things I described have only occurred recently, when in fact it's been a trend that has been accelerating for many decades.
...before Obama spent all the money on companies which the people needed to exist or they would totally rely on the government for money and help.
Wait, what? By that logic the people are made dependent on the government either way. Having the government direct the "money and help" through a third party doesn't change anything, except for increasing the levels of corruption in both the government and private sector. Never mind the fact that the government has no business giving/loaning taxpayer money to private business simply to prop them up if they would otherwise not exist. Doing so distorts and eventually destroys the free market and twists capitalism into a corrupt and extremely destructive amalgam of socialism and fascism.
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. - Thomas Jefferson"
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have. - Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. - Thomas Jefferson
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. - James Madison
The Utopian schemes of re-distribution of the wealth...are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. - Samuel Adams
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. - Benjamin Franklin
In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support (salary) is a power over his will. - Alexander Hamilton
Strat
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Informative)
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. - Thomas Jefferson [monticello.org]
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. - Abraham Lincoln.
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Be careful with those Founding Fathers quotes, or people will label you a Libertarian, Crank, or Ronulan.
Which says more about the ignorance and intellectual laziness of such people who are quick to attach convenient labels in order to dismiss opinions that they disagree with but are incapable of expressing why, than it does about my opinions.
Strat
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I read Strat's post and found myself agreeing, kind of, and then I read yours and realized it's really a matter of Occam's razor. The chinese government is corrupt, the chinese government controls (at least to a degree) the chinese market, and IBM wants to make some *money*. Thanks for bringing me back from the edge!
I would argue that IBM shares the same goals as those in power in the US government, so the comparison is valid. Those goals being power and wealth, which are simply two faces of the same coin. If you have plenty of one, you can obtain the other.
Strat
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Interesting)
Fiscal policy is one way to direct growth in the economy. Infrastructure projects, especially, provide the most bang for the buck in terms of value for money. The only problem is that infrastructure tend to require maintenance which means future funding is in essence commited. Social programs are also useful to ensure what is most fairly termed as equality of opportunity, to help alieviate the inherent unfairness of wealth distribution. It is not fair, as a matter of fact, to deny opportunity of advancement due to ones situation at birth. This is why we spend money on things like education so that we have a more inclusive society where advancement is based on merit, and not solely on whether you have the means to pay for advancement.
Monetary policy is another way to direct growth although it tends to result in bubbles when the interest rates are very low levels to spur investments mainly fueled by debt. When money is essentially cheap, banks and investers tend to do stupid things with all this surplus cash flowing around - like making mortgages to people who they know can't afford it (and then selling the mortgages off at a profit to relieve themselves of any risk), or private equity making leveraged buyouts incurring a large debt on the target company which brings on unsustainable interest payments when the money markets dry up.
Back to fiscal policy, the problem with the US is not that it is spending too much (compared to other advanced economies). It is mosty because public spending in the US is notoriously poor value. For example, the US spends ~8% of GDP on just Medicare and Medicaid, covering only a small proportion of the population. In total the US spends nearly 16% of GDP on heathcare. The UK for example, spends only 8% on its healthcare system that covers everybody, at all ages.
Re:How long do you wait to see a doctor in the UK? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I lived in the US, the UK and Canada, each for a significant amount of time, so I have first hand experience with all three medical systems, as well as some experience with the medical systems of other countries as I have worked or stayed in a number of places for shorter periods.
Now back to your question. All important surgery in the UK is prioritized. If you want anedoctal evidence, my sister-in-law who is a university student in the UK fell on her face (which is quite terrible for a girl) not-too-long-ago requiring in 13 stitches in total. Due to the location of injury (very close to her eye), the A&E (ER) doctor in the hospital where she was taken from immediately referred her to a plastic surgeon who is a specialist in these proceedures to minimize the risk to her sight (and her face). She was taken by ambulance to the other hospital and had surgery performed. This process took in total 6 hours. She stayed in hospital for the night and went back several times to the specialist to check up on her progress and to ensure that any scarring is kept to a minimum.
The UK does not have a perfect medical system, but IMHO it is very good, especially considering you don't usually have to pay anything out of pocket (The whole NHS system is paid for out of general taxation). If you are not happy with the care, there are a variety of options available. You can top-up your NHS coverage with private insurance that pays for proceedures which do have a waiting list (like hip replacements) and specialists while still using the NHS for frontline care, or you can go private completely and buy insurance that covers everything, including GP (family doctor) visits. Counter-intuitively, this nationalized system also created a very competitive market for health insurance as private insurance is basically a "luxury". You can buy personal coverage for a family of four for 30 GBP (~45 USD) for basic cover, to roughly 100 GBP (~150 USD) for fully comprehensive cover which is roughly 1/10 the cost compared to the average in the US.
Re:How long do you wait to see a doctor in the UK? (Score:4, Interesting)
Forgot to answer your other question. The amount of waiting for GP consultations is honestly down to your medical centre or surgery (doctors office, usually staffed by a few GPs). Two of my previous GP practices (I moved around a bit) had walk-in sessions to see a GP everyday so you are almost certain to see a GP on the same day, which was great, and if you wanted to see your dedicated GP, you just had to check her walk-in schedule. Those that require appointments usually take urgent matters on the same day, and book you in depending on workload and whether you want to see your dedicated GP or not. In my experience, this was usually in 1-2 days. The most I have waited on to see a doctor for a minor ailment was 5 days, which I found acceptable. On the other hand, some surgeries are terrible at schedeling consultations, especially some of the bigger ones, which means it's probably a good idea to change to another surgery who will give you a good service (In the UK, the GPs are usually private practices that are paid by the NHS through a contract framework and you can choose your GP yourself).
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I am also in the US. I have a counterexample. As a sole proprietor, I get to buy my own health insurance. I spend ~$550/month for basic HMO coverage for my family.
I broke my toe about a year ago on some furniture in the dark, such that it was pointing sideways. While it is true that I could (and unfortunately did) go to the suburban emergency room on the advice of my GP's on-call doc to get immediate treatment, $600 out-of-pocket (and another $1300 from my insurance company) got me an x-ray (because you
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The only difference is that the US government is selling the entire nation to the Chinese in the form of borrowing/debt to finance out of control spending on... [etc., etc.]
You'll have to forgive me for nodding off there, but the phrase "out-of-control spending" is repeated so often these days that the sight of it is enough to bore me asleep.
Anyway, that's off topic. What really bugs me is the whole "selling us to China" meme. What percent of public debt do you think china owns? 50%? 75%? The answer, if Wikipedia is right (and maybe it isn't, but I'm going to ask for a citation if you think so) was 8%, or about a trillion dollars, as of may 2011. The U.K., not for nothing, h
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Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:4, Insightful)
How about I complain about Corporate America and Corporate Globe whoring themselves to China?
Few if any corporations owe their past successes to China. These prostitutes are selling technology discovered by mostly the Western world, and Russia, and some from the third world to China for a short term profit. Yes, 5 years or 10 years is short term. China is the only frigging entity in the world with a long term goal. Assassin's mace.
Oh, but someone will post here again, telling me that's just a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory my ass - we see it happening before our very eyes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_programme [wikipedia.org]
It is their goal to dominate the United States economically, politically, and militarily. And, IBM sells out to China, just as they sold out to the Nazi's before the United States declared war on them.
HEY, IBM!! You owe your current economic position and success to the west!
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:4, Insightful)
If you were aware of world history as it relates to China and western countries, you would know that "the west" owes its advancing to the industrial revolution and beyond directly to Chinese technologies (e.g., Paper, gunpowder, compass, and printing). So that China is going to inevitably dominate the West yet again is simply a return to the historical norm.
And that China is getting access to western technologies to do so is entirely justified based on history.
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Gunpowder, yes. Compass? " The earliest Chinese magnetic compasses were probably not designed for navigation, but rather to order and harmonize their environments and buildings in accordance with the geomantic principles of feng shui." Paper? Most definitely not - heard of papyrus? I believe the Egyptians came up with that first. Printing? I really don't think so. "The history of printing started around 3000 BC with the duplication of images. The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an impress o
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India for crucible steel, the cotton gin, and the number zero?
The Mayans had a notation for zero centuries before the Indians.
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It is their goal to dominate the United States economically, politically, and militarily.
Well, yes, but also the rest of the world. They want to be dominate. The same way that the USA does. And Russia. And, well, all nations. It's kind of their natural goal. (Except for Switzerland, but they're kinda freaks). The same way that corporations want to dominate their market (and all markets, really). They want to, you know, "win".
It only ever comes down to war when shit gets really bad. We're not anywhere near war. We're not at war with EastAsia or EurAsia. Get over it.
But yeah, dick move on
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Just because you predicted someone would call you out for being a conspiracy theorists doesn't make you any less of a conspiracy theorist.
China has a goal to be the dominate world power economically, politically, and militarily? No shit, Sherlock. Why do you think the EU formed? Because despite their permanent Security Council status, France is too small to be the dominate world power on their own. So they corralled other European states around them for the economic weight to have a fighting chance against
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In your list of unjust diddling in other nation's affairs, you forgot a pretty important one. Operation Ajax has come back to bite us in the ass. And, the fallout is still falling, so it's impossible to say how badly we've been bitten.
I'm not blindly in love with my government, after all. My government has committed a number of heinous acts, including forced sterilization for women accepting medical aid in Africa, experimenting on black inmates with gonorhea, subjugating the Native Americans - and much,
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I've got your natural master - swinging, dude. WTF do you mean by "natural master" anyway? You are claiming that it is natural, right, or just, that one people should subjugate the people around them?
Yes, yes, I know that the US government thinks along those lines, albeit not in the terms you imply. And, yes, I am very sure that the Chinese government thinks the same way - and probably in the terms that you use.
But, I ask, what is RIGHT? Is it right that one people dominate the world, and subjugate all
Re:News Flash: CEOs Think Strategically (Score:5, Interesting)
China is the natural master of Asia. The US has meddled there for no reason except missionary zeal.
Natural master my big brown stnking ass...
Regards,
Rest of Asia (South, South east, south west (including but not limited to india, japan, korea etc.))
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Nope, that would be Mongolia, which, after all, conquered China. China is crippled by being too easily united and ruled by a dictator, who's natural inclination is to stop all progress to preserve the status quo. Or perhaps it might be Japan, which has also shown considerable ability to adapt the best practices from foreign countries and even contribute back to the world culture.
Of course, as long as we're talking about "natural masters", the real Supreme Overlord would
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>For once, a CEO thought beyond the next quarterly report. Be careful what you complain about.
Clever point about the longterm. I feel a bit ambivalent about this, since the longterm thingy may be good. The doing business with the oppressive regime is bad.
This reminds me of IBM selling the gassingadministrationsystems (or whatchamacallit) to the Nazis...
We should perhaps not blame the corporations, though, but also not expect any sort of decency from them. The solution should instead be outlawing genocide
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Poor braindead fool. Take another look around, and tell us again who is controlling and/or taking control of the world. The US, UK, and Europe are slipping backward, while that old "Sleeping Giant" reaches for more and more control. DUHHH!
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GP sounds more like a comically paranoid xenophobe to me.
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Too bad he didn't think so far ahead to see what happens when IBM makes inroads into China's market and China turns around and screws them. Which is basically inevitable.
One wonders if IBM got it's money's worth over all (Score:5, Informative)
They're implying that IBM took less money for it's asset to curry favor with the chinese. That would only make sense if IBM got more money then the difference between the two payments over time as a result of that good will.
Has that happened? I don't know... I think American business might have been too brash in it's oriental investments. Most of them seem to be backfiring in alarming ways. We seem to have taught our chinese business contacts just well enough to start competing with us directly where before our technological edge made that impossible.
In any case, it seems like many of the US multinationals have woken up to the issue. We'll see what happens.
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Re:One wonders if IBM got it's money's worth over (Score:5, Informative)
WTH are you talking about? GM is perhaps the biggest of the China success stories.
"GM sold about 1.83 million vehicles in China last year [versus] 2.07 million cars and trucks in the U.S. But GM, already the leader in China with 13.4% of the market, is still gaining share. GM's market share was 11.3% in 2008."
http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/12/news/companies/gm_us_china_salesrace/index.htm [cnn.com]
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That's true. Buick is considered a prestige brand over there, comparable to lower-end BMWs and Mercedes models.
Historically, old Communist Party honchos like Zhou Enlai rode around in big black Buicks. Combine this legacy with GM's present-day aggressive marketing of Buick as a sexy luxury car makes it a very attractive vehicle for the Chinese upper classes.
Ouch! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/ibms-palmisano-techs-slumdog-millionaire-257 [infoworld.com]
Sure, the business press has wet dreams about Palmisano and Gerstner who picked him as his successor:
http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/03/forbes-india-person-of-the-year-sam-palisan-ibm.html [forbes.com]
But the truth was really quite ugly. You won't read this in Forbes, but you will read it in - of all places - the reader feedback at Amazon:
It is strangely ironic that, after doing his best to suppress all negative communication within IBM, it should be the reader feedback on amazon.com that alerts Gerstner to what the world at large really thinks of him.
In the last five years, Gerstner has reaped a profit of [$$$] million in the sale of awarded stock options. These stock options were awarded while he held the joint positions of IBM CEO and chairman. During that period, IBM spent [$$$] billion buying back its own stock to drive the price up so that executives could cash out at handsome profits. This is money that could have been spent on developing new products, attracting new talent and honoring promises made to employees and retirees.
Where did all that money come from?
Not from profit growth, which remained flat at about 2 percent per year when you strip out the retirees' pension fund surplus "vapor profits."
It came from selling off large chunks of the company and its assets, laying off tens of thousands of employees and slashing pension and health care benefits for employees and retirees. In 2002 alone, IBM has quietly cut 15,000 jobs. Health benefits, which were promised "free for life," now cost retirees a substantial amount of their pensions. Only one minuscule cost-of-living increase has been awarded pension recipients in the past 11 years.
The greed doesn't stop there. Now, Lou had not only been retained as chairman of the board, he has been awarded a 10-year consulting contract, with fully paid expenses at his previous salary of $2 million a year. These expenses have been conservatively estimated to be $100,000 annually.
Save IBM? More like turning it into just another money grubbing corporation while lining his pockets. I would love to see a rebuttal book. God help us all if Lou's management methods become benchmarks for future corporate leaders.
http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnaround/product-reviews/0060523794/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/185-5256096-7601530?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 [amazon.com]
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gerstner and Palmisano transformed IBM from a lumbering, confused giant into a lithe dancer. I admire them for that. They also taught me to never put my trust in a multinational corporation. You'd think that, by the 1990s, I would have learned that, but, no, I needed further negative reinforcement before the lesson would stick. OS/2 was a very special object lesson -- abandoned by one vendor, then the other. Both vendors had been deliriously enthusiastic, hyping it to levels that were only topped by the Amiga. Unsurprisingly, I also bought into that, as well. Yes, I really know how to pick a winner. After the slow, agonizing deaths of the Amiga and OS/2, I had an epiphany and switched to Linux. My resolve has not been resolute over the years (being a gamer under Linux sucks), but I can credit IBM with driving home the lesson that I should have learned 10 years prior to that: never, ever trust a multinational corporation. It's unsurprising that a corporation willing to treat its customers poorly would also treat its employees poorly. It's just business, though. Business as usual.
The lesson is not such an easy one to learn. Everyone hates Sony, Microsoft, Intel, and other Slashdot whipping boys, but how many people implicitly trust Apple or Google? Well, I don't trust any of them. Multinational corporations exist to make money, not to follow through on promises made to customers. That doesn't necessarily mean you should boycott every multinational corporation, if you're already happy with their products and services -- just be realistic enough to recognize that if they can make more money by screwing you over than by providing good service, most of them will.
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Citing OS/2 is a strange example. It's not like IBM screwed people over. They lost to Microsoft Windows. They gave it a serious go (unlike HP's WebOS), and supported it far longer than most companies would have.
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You're right. Re-reading my post, I think I mixed together two or three different points indiscriminately, ultimately switching abruptly to a rant about the evils of commercial software, right in the middle of some kind of socialist rant. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking. In my defense, I'm bipolar and unmedicated. If my thought processes end up being a bit chaotic and disconnected, hopefully I can be a source of amusement, at least.
That just wasn't a very well thought out or composed
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Kudos for acknowledgment.
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Gerstner saved IBM from irrelevance and possible bankruptcy. Palmisano turned it from a hardware company into a services company, a services company particularly adept at outsourcing.
It is not lithe. These guys steer the company 5 years into the future. They have an advantage in that where they move, they tend to change the future, but if they pick a bad direction, the company is screwed for at least a decade.
The sour grapes you're hearing are not from people who were OS/2 or Thinkpad loyalists, they'
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As a former employee, I'm quite happy with Gerstner. Mostly because he quadrupled the price of the stock I held. He also sold off the business unit I was it, but eh, I was quitting anyway.
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Is "[$$$] million" supposed to be some kind of fact?
"IBM enhanced its stature in the lucrative China" (Score:2)
so in the end didnt they end up selling it for top dollar ?
Trust? (Score:4, Insightful)
Although US and Chinese companies do business with each other, I'm not really sure that they trust each other. And both sides have good reasons for being so. US companies want access to a growth market, but are wary of their investments in a country whose government and legal system don't function like they are used to elsewhere. China is fearful that foreign companies want to get in to exploit their market and resources, while cutting not fostering local business growth.
But at the moment, business and government go hand-in-hand in China: you can't deal with one, without automatically dealing with the other. So yes, if IBM wanted to dump their PC business anyway, because it is now a commodity business, why not use it as a pawn it a greater game with China?
However, IBM still makes high end Intel blade servers. What will happen when Lenovo starts to wander up into that end of the market?
Blades are largely irrelevant to the acquisition (Score:3)
Except for the branding advantage of having a PC division, the blade market has nothing to do with the PC market. (And, that branding advantage was small enough that IBM took some cash and didn't look back when dumping it.) The design and manufacture of PC's has little to do with all but the lowest-end servers, except for the fact that they happen to use the same CPU instruction set. But motherboard engineers practically grow on trees, so that isn't much of an advantage at all.
I'm not saying Lenovo won't
And?... (Score:2)
IBM (and it's CEO), taking notice of the business climate in another country, accepted less short-term cash on an acquisition in order to help promote long-term sales. This is exactly the sort of decisions a CEO is paid to make; this is what we want them to do!
Agent of a Foreign Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the way many large US based multinational companies behave, they routinely put their corporate interests at odds with the US government and economy. They ship as many jobs as they can overseas and doge taxes. GE paid no federal income tax last year. GM invested in it's China operations while it was in a bankruptcy funded by the US Treasury.
But since they are still "US" corporations they don't get the kind of scrutiny that would be required if they were not US based. It would be a lot more realistic to recognize that they have no meaningful commitment to the US and they act on their narrowly perceived economic goals. It would be better for the country if their access to the US political establishment was limited, based on how their economic interests driven by non-US governments.
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It would be a lot more realistic to recognize that they have no meaningful commitment to the US and they act on their narrowly perceived economic goals. It would be better for the country if their access to the US political establishment was limited, based on how their economic interests driven by non-US governments.
...and yet corporate interests reign supreme in U.S. politics, because what's good for them is 'good for the people of the U.S.' or so they would have you believe. How many examples like this are needed before people will stop coddling corporations who have absolultely *0* loyalty to the U.S. at all.
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Interesting insight there. If you pay no taxes you shouldn't be allowed to lobby the US Govt. Wait.... They purchase elections for congressmen and senators so they may look at that as the taxes they have paid no?
Definitely. (Score:2)
Do it publicly, loudly, and in a way that their lobbyists can't object to witnessing.
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Funny, that's not what they say to their own employees. IBM employees are told that they belong to a global company, working and doing business with everyone in the world. Also, even though they say they are global, they've got to be based somewhere, right? And lo and behold, it's in Armonk, New York [wikipedia.org], not in the Cayman Islands (although I don't know whether they have a subsidiary there or not).
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Should the US government be registered as the US agent of multiple foreign governments and stateless entities?
The outrage because it's China? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the outrage because the country is China? Every laptop I've bought in the past five years have come from China.
I think the biggest fear we have is that China is now going to create companies that as the article says are global players. We have constantly dismissed China as a cheap labor pool where work would vanish if the wages went up, then as backstabbing reverse-engineers who dare betray the sacred trust of US companies of moving their operations to China for profit, and then to mindless cultural inferiors where American exceptionalism would outshine and blaze away anything the Chinese could do. Now, we're fighting the fear that Chinese could become global players with these thinly-veiled outrage stories.
As they used to say in the 80s movies, "are you afraid of a little competition?"
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China may still suffer a Japanese meltdown. You can't swing a dead cat these days without reading about the risks inherent in the Chinese economy and how those risks are made worse by the Chinese political system.
Whether it's bad lending practices, how the domestic economy is basically built on real estate and construction, the currency pegging and under-valuation, inflation -- there's all kinds of naysayers pointing out disturbing facts, often with the disclaimer that they're basing it on the official Chi
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That's a very broad use of the word 'hostile.'
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US wages need to drop to force prices down so we can compete.
That will force local prices down too.
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That would heavily reduce the purchasing power of the USA and collapse it as a market to sell luxury goods to. Most of the things sold in the US are already made in China, they won't get significantly cheaper just because US wages are dropping. So people would simply be unable to buy as much which means both a lower quality of life and drastically reduced revenues for companies selling to the US.
The US economy would shrink massively while the US debts remain the same, including the interest payments. The de
Surprised? (Score:2)
Just worthless POSs at IBM. I am glad that I am o
Maximum profit (Score:2, Insightful)
societal issues
the environment
education
health
culture
(http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/index.html -- also click the links on the left, for example about politics)
But what's more important, is how to be good friends with chinese dictators who don't give a shit about any of the topics mentioned above, so as to make more $$$ by doing business with china.
I doubt that acting like this is going to turn this world into a
The government still steers business (Score:2)
I'm glad Dell's bid didn't win out... (Score:2)
Goldman Sachs Brokered the Deal for Lenovo (Score:2)
BusinessWeek [businessweek.com]: "The deal's advocates faced a barrage of questions. In addition to Mary Ma, Lenovo's chief financial officer, the lineup included people from consultant McKinsey and investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS ). The directors' chief concern: Were Lenovo's execs really capable of running a complex global business? The breakthrough came after three days. The directors concluded that if Lenovo could recruit IBM's top execs to help manage the company, this merger could succeed. "The board felt there were p
Re:No development for 6 years (Score:5, Interesting)
In my last laptop upgraded I decided to go with a Dell XPS because the ThinkPad T was overpriced here.
Re:No development for 6 years (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe that's because there are only a small handful of companies that make laptops. Dell, Apple, IBM/Lenovo, HP, etc all buy laptops from a few ODMs [wikipedia.org], then put their sticker on it. From a long time, Asus was the only company that designed, manufactured, and sold their own laptops, but they recently spun-off their ODM business. Chances are, half of those laptops that you were using before were simply rebadged Asus laptops. They sold many laptops to Apple, Dell, and IBM. Nowadays, it looks like they just slap on a sticker, like everyone else -- too bad. I liked being able to skip the middle man.
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Yeah, I shouldn't have flippantly characterized the relationship as being so one-sided. Apple obviously does invest quite heavily in research and design, even if some of the others have been rather unimpressive lately.
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How is this "treason"? The US government actively sought to encourage trade and investment between US and China, and IBM followed suit. If the US wanted to forbid business with China, we would've done so the same way we continued to embargo Cuba for many years.
Furthermore, selling for less so you can make more down the road, is part of good business strategy, no different from when milk goes on sale at the local supermarket, or when you change jobs to take a lower paying position in a growing company, or