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To: Les H who wrote (149945)	2/7/2002 8:29:28 PM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Les: Why does that article sound familiar? Perhaps because I identified and wrote about every one of those IBM issues (and a few others) more than two years ago. By my count, that makes it six articles questioning IBM's accounting in the last two weeks. This is the stuff of which nasty vertical slides are made. As I noted at the time, this is what motivated me to fill the knapsack with IBM puts. I will add more as we go forward. They are (finally) closing in on Louis' sleight-of-hand "magic" and I intend to cash in on my previous "grunt work", digging through his garbage dumpster (10-Qs). Best, Earlie

To: Les H who wrote (149945)	2/7/2002 9:53:36 PM
From: J. P.	Respond to of 436258

I was writing about this scam four years ago on the IBM thread but it never mattered because the stock kept going up. IBM's trick is to float debt, take the money and buy back the stock. Lower the float, raise the EPS, raise the stock price, amortize the debt at a much lower interest rate than the stock gains...a magical self fulfilling prophesy as long as you're in a bull market. IBM just has too immense scale and base in too many areas to truly organically grow much on a year over year basis. This is one of many reasons I think we're in for a bear market longer than most expect, companies no longer have the guaranteed currency of a rising stock to play games with. The curtain is pulled away to reveal the real wizard of oz....