Place Your Bets: Who Will Die First? Microsoft or IBM?
Not even joking; make a guess
IBM may soon be 80 billion dollars in debt (estimates from insiders, we'll know the exact figure at the end of January or very early in February). Microsoft's debt is at over 120 billion dollars and rapidly growing each quarter. And no, it is not worth trillions and it can barely retain staff (too expensive to pay salaries to), let alone keep a campus library. Debt is a contagion, not some growth opportunity, as Edward Zitron has just explained. Do not try to normalise or justify fiscal slavery.
IBM and Microsoft are troubled companies that have many of the same issues/pains in common and resort to similar tactics to cut staff without anybody noticing (or the media reporting on it). We're not even going to compare the companies on the basis of shallow staff like CEO ethnicity; leave such stupidity to Microsoft Lunduke.
GAFAM and IBM act like extensions of the US military. Maybe because, in a way, this is what they are. In the news today we see "Every data centre is a U.S. military base" (by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives or CCPA) and the same from Nick Heer. Carole Cadwalladr said a lot more about it very recently. In light of sabre rattling over Greenland people 'suddenly' start to 'notice'. Where were they when Microsoft cut off ICC from its communications because Captain Cheeto got angry?
Now that the US budget is kaput (inflation issues, piracy for other nations' oil etc.) it's hard to believe or envision more debt being tolerated (very high interest rates on debt, so servicing the debt is a yoke). The big tech companies will soon amass over a trillion dollars in debt and they're not worth anywhere near what Wall Street claims (rogue accounting helps them misreport revenue).
In colloquial terms it's fair to call it a "***show", one giant dumpster fire that burns over ten thousand workers per quarter. Of course they don't fully disclose this or instead disclose phony numbers. When they deny layoffs they don't actually deny layoffs. They trot out some relatively low-level employee to write a tweet in response to a tweet. Why? Because the stock is falling. Shareholders lose confidence. In IBM's case, there are many ways they hide the layoffs and skirt the WARN Act. We know because we hear about it. Sometimes we also see public comments about it. Red Hat is having layoffs this month and we rapidly became an irritant to IBM due to whistleblowers who respect what we publish and send us additional information (sort of like our EPO coverage since 2014). "RH [Red Hat] employees need support," an associate has noted, as RH was a fairly decent company prior to capture by Microsoft IBM" (without the IBM deal, secured by the nepotism/connections of Madame Maxwell, the mother of Bill Epsteingate, Microsoft would never had taken off).
We are extremely dissatisfied if not deeply disgusted by how media handles the EPO and the same goes for IBM. Lacking leaks or official statements or some credible WBers, the media simply pretends nothing is happening at IBM. Instead it takes bribes to mention "AI" and "quantum" and other vapourware (not just for IBM). █
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