To: Jim Koch who wrote (6917 ) 10/18/2000 3:22:24 AM From: THE WATSONYOUTH Read Replies (2) | Respond to As if it wasn't already clear... Lou-ser doesn't have a revenue producing bone in his body. Hard to believe he couldn't even manage 5% growth. With two years worth of options now under water, the Gerstneryouth will continue (in droves) to seek greener pastures. So, microelectronics demand is taking off and IBM can't even supply internal needs little alone external customers. And why might that be? Well... if you don't build even one state of the art fab in the entire decade of the 90s, it's no f***ing wonder. How many jobs did all those stock ($25 billion??) buy backs create? How much revenue?? How many new products??? How many state of the art mega fabs could that money have bought??? Lou-ser's financial "engineering" has torn the heart out of this company. His pension and medical benefit thefts have done wonders for company loyalty and morale. And all the while, senior level management performance is based on EPS. How surprising is it that Lou-ser is quite good at this??? Well for starters.... just sell off any asset not nailed down. I would provide a list but my net session would expire long before I finished. What else? Drastically reduce future pension and health care costs by simply screwing your long time employees out of their pensions and medical benefits. Then, move the interest on the now grossly over funded part of the plan to the bottom line to the tune of over $1 BILLION per year. Voila! Earnings without revenues....the Gerstner way. What a concept!! I could go on and on. This is the most pompous SOB imaginable. Once you get past all the shills, sycophants, cronies, bodyguards, etc. he surrounds himself with, do you know what is left?? Absolutely nothing! There's just nothing there. And this guy wants to be Sect. of Education so he can teach this stuff to our American youth. "Gerstner Ethics"... the new social science for the new millennium. Well, Gerstner will be gone before this time next year. Hopefully for IBM, it will not be too late. There is still a tremendous wealth of talent that, if given even a hint of true technical leadership, could really turn things around.
