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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (9030)	10/5/2001 1:46:02 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

IBM Gives Software The Hard Sell Friday October 5, 12:05 pm Eastern Time Forbes.com By Lisa DiCarlo IBM today signed its seventieth software partnership, part of a two-year-old initiative that has already added nearly $2 billion to its top line. IBM said it has partnered with Invensys , a British company that makes software for manufacturing automation. Invensys has made a commitment to sell a high percentage of its products on IBM's platform, which includes its database, servers and middleware. In return, Invensys can leverage IBM's sales force and marketing to sell its software in all corners of the world, gaining access to larger-sized customers that otherwise might have been out of the company's reach. For IBM, these partnerships are a way to steal market share from Oracle , BEA , Sun Microsystems and others. IBM has already been working with best-of-breed software companies, including SAP , Siebel and PeopleSoft --once tight partners with IBM's competitors. For example, a few years ago Siebel was a close partner of Oracle's. Only 2% to 3% of Siebel's customer relationship management software was sold on IBM's platform. Today that figure is about 35%, IBM says. "When we started the program we weren't sure if leading software vendors would be willing to make the commitments for such high market share targets," says Bob Timpson, general manager for developer relations at IBM. Several years ago, IBM actually had been in the enterprise application business, spending billions to develop and sell software. But it was an unsuccessful business, since customers preferred to buy best-of-breed software from more specialized companies. So IBM got out of the applications business and took a partner-based approach. The deals have yielded $1.75 billion in incremental revenue for IBM's database, middleware, servers and services--$1 billion of that in the first six months of this year. Timpson says IBM has also partnered with dozens of smaller niche players for less aggressive commitments. He also says there are still a few larger players that it wants to do deals with. Who'd have thought five years ago that IBM, which has forever taken a soup-to-nuts approach to technology, would succeed at being a friendly partner? This is obviously not your father's IBM.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (9030)	10/5/2001 2:08:43 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

Want Fiscal Stimulus? Simplify Taxes Friday October 5, 8:29 am Eastern Time BusinessWeek Online Daily Briefing: SOUND MONEY By Christopher Farrell You have to hand it to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan: Once again, he's showing he knows how to exercise leadership during an economic crisis. The Fed has acted decisively since September 11 by reducing its benchmark interest rate by a percentage point in two swift moves, to 2.5% -- the lowest rate since 1962. And despite criticisms that the nation's central bank is simply pushing on a string, a steady stream of rate cuts all year did keep the economy out of recession before the terrorist attacks. Low interest rates propped up the housing market, a gain that more than offset the losses many investors suffered in the stock market. Consumers also shored up their balance sheets by taking advantage of cheap rates to refinance their mortgages. FAVORED SCHEMES. However, monetary policy is no longer enough to revive an economy plunged into negative growth by terrorism. The key question now is fiscal policy. A consensus appears to be growing among policymakers that any fiscal-policy stimulus package should be more than $100 billion. Congress and the Bush Administration have already hiked government spending by some $45 billion, much of it targeted toward defense and national security. And on Oct. 4, President Bush said he would push for a stimulus plan as large as $75 billion to ``invigorate this economy.'' Now comes the difficult part. Plenty of proposals are floating around Washington, many of them favored schemes of industry and other special interests that are being dusted off in the current environment. Among the most popular proposals: A lower capital-gains tax rate, reduced corporate income taxes, a tax rebate, a temporary cut in payroll taxes, or more likely, some combination of these ideas. Each proposal may have individual merit. But taken singly or together, these maneuvers will only make a far too complicated tax code even more Byzantine. Already, it's full of credits, deductions, exemptions, and income phase-outs, especially after the passage of President's Bush's gargantuan, gimmick-laden tax bill earlier this year. For instance, new education tax breaks that take effect in 2002 expire in 2006; the estate tax is phased out until 2010 but is restored in 2011; and it takes years for families to escape the widely reviled marriage penalty. ELIMINATE INEQUITIES. Why not take the opportunity offered by the nation's need for fiscal stimulus to ditch the mess of the 2001 tax-cut law and create a far simpler tax code instead. Get rid of as many deductions, credits, and phase-outs as possible, including eliminating the distinction between taxing ordinary income and capital gains. Broadening the tax base would allow Congress to sharply reduce income tax rates and get rid of the many inequities that have crept into the code over the years. Congress could act quickly since the supporting data are available -- tax specialists such as Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan have long studied the trade-offs inherent in populist tax simplification. A concerted push to steer Washington away from the hard-to-track tax-subsidy game would maintain fiscal discipline. Tax simplification would mark a genuine improvement in fiscal policy, and best of all, it would accomplish these goals while stimulating the economy. Go to www.businessweek.com to see all of our latest stories.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (9030)	10/5/2001 2:56:33 PM
From: Mark Fowler	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57684

They need to look back at some of the Reagan tax cuts. Roll back the capital gains tax rate for individuals and target investment tax credits to businesses, accelerate depreciation write offs for capital expenditures, Lower the corporate tax, and up the amount of losses one should be able to carry forward from stock . That would be a good start!