Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Kubecost Acquisition Does Not Show IBM is Rich, It Shows It Wants to Distract From Mass Layoffs Happening This Week (Thousands Laid Off in the Dark)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 18, 2024,
updated Sep 18, 2024

Cactus desert plant

So-called "news deserts" have become a national and international phenomenon (not local/regional)

On news deserts

Some of the so-called media (parrots) covers this chaff while completely, entirely ignoring mass layoffs at IBM. It's unbelievable, but we saw this before, as noted yesterday.

The chaff is basically IBM buying companies almost nobody ever heard about, inflating an already fake "market cap", pretending to be rich when IBM's debt is 60 billion (USD) and the amount of money IBM can raise by selling assets is about 13.6 billion (USD):

statistics

Also, debt loading aspects should be considered.

Do the maths...

In a nutshell: "Debt loading is an unscrupulous practice sometimes employed by entrepreneurs and businesses facing bankruptcy. Debt loading works by spending all cash reserves, maxing out lines of credit and credit cards, and failing to pay bills in anticipation of filing for bankruptcy protection. Essentially, the business loads up on as much debt as possible before attempting to clear the debt by filing for bankruptcy. Debt loading can also be used by businesses as a way to earn money from interest payments. For example, if a company takes out loans through foreign associates offshore, it could be considered a debt-loading strategy that allows them to transfer their profit offshores, where tax laws are different, by using interest payments."

This is low-grade noise:

Longtime Microsoft booster and spinner: IBM acquires Kubernetes cost optimization startup Kubecost

The real news, which ought to be shown at the front pages of many news sites right now (not just tech sites), is IBM layoffs. IBM is where a lot of "modern" computing started. Shouldn't it be considered important when thousands lose their jobs there? Unlike today, when we have "GAFAM", back in the 1970s IBM was almost synonymous with "computers"; no Sun or Oracle or Apple/Microsoft to speak of (until a bit later). It was mostly IBM.

Here's a comment posted an hour ago:

I’m really sorry. Many people gave the best of themselves, their trust, and loyalty to an organization that didn’t deserve it. Feel your feelings and express them. This is a relatively safe space. I say "relatively" because the Soul Crusher’s minions monitor it and occasionally get the mods to take down posts that hit a little too close to the truth. We’ll see how long dissent stands.

There’s one person deserving of everyone’s collective anger: an unscrupulous, thin-skinned narcissist who enjoys berating people on all-hands calls and gave himself a 23% raise, fully aware of what he had done, what he was about to do, and what he will continue to do. He doesn’t feel anyone’s pain, and frankly, he doesn’t care. That much is clear. Today was a good day for him.

You can move on and thrive. You can also fight and thrive—for yourself, for justice, to expose abuses of power, unethical practices, maybe even criminality, that we all know this regime is full of. Can you imagine what thousands of employees have seen and heard during this guy’s corrupt tenure? The way he’s turned the culture into a fear-based, corporate Thunderdome? The way he conducts staff reductions and hides the bodies? The coming pump and dump? History will not be kind to him.

Just know you are not disempowered. Far from it.

The remaining comments there are good as well. When will media join in and report the real news?

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