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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (29724)	7/11/1998 5:27:00 PM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Joan: Loved your post. Nice clean shot to the kidney re CPQ. (g) CPQ estimates $1.5 billion to $2.0 billion restructuring charge with respect to DEC just after the acquisition. Since DEC had already restructured and sold off divisions and assets at regular intervals, I figured CPQ was providing enough room to write down a good deal (if not all) of their own internal problems (the great channel stuffing caper that never was) in providing that figure. Then comes the revelation,....not $1.5 billion, but $5.0 billion. WOW! CPQ's channel problems are both well known and large, but this is insane. Writedowns used to be viewed as owning up to the dumb mistakes of the past. Today, its just a means through which the excrement that remains from past artificially created "profits" is buried or for ensuring a few quarters worth of follow-on "profits" irrespective of business conditions. Only illegal if you're caught or if someone gives a darn. Here's to CPQ's upcoming "remarkable return to profitability" (g) Best, Earlie

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (29724)	7/12/1998 12:39:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Joan, Not illegal. In fact, it may not even be considered unethical with the current crop of corporate criminals. But hiding numbers sure isn't very helpful to learning what is going on. The thing that bothers me most is that the public always assumes that write offs are good things, when they are unequivacle bad events most of the time. Writeoffs remind me of celebrities who decide to enter rehab when their other choice is prison. <G> MB