dell computers Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

28 million wrongs

I guess I should not be surprised. We heap tons of accolades and money on our “whiz kids” of Wall Street. Mark Hurd was just the latest CEO to be backing up his truck and filling it with large sums of cash. Sure we’re in the midst of coming out of one of the greatest recessions in our history, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spend millions on CEOs. At least, this is the thinking in these board rooms of large corporations. Mark Hurd, of course, was working for Hewlett-Packard. He is the latest in a long string of CEOs to “turn around” a failing company. He has allowed Hewlett-Packard to leapfrog Dell Computers to become the largest technology company in the world. For his efforts he was about to be crowned with a $100 million contract. Unfortunately for him, a little scandal has ruined his big payday.

Now Mark Hurd has been asked to leave. When you and I are asked to leave or place of employment, we have to fight to get our last check. They don’t even pay out the year. There is no golden parachute. We will not have access to the company plane. Yet, Mark Hurd will be given $28 million in cash and stock for submitting falsified financial reports in order to hide a relationship. How is paying this guy an extra dime in the best interest of Hewlett-Packard or the country?

This is just another example of how there are separate rules for corporate executives. The rest of us, when we get fired, we get nothing.

By ecthompsonmd|2010-08-10T07:09:24-04:00August 10th, 2010|Business|Comments Off

Conversions of confusions

I just spent 90 minutes on the phone with Dell Computers, excluding the 30 minutes that I spent on Dell Chat. Have I got my computer problem solved? No. Do I feel as if I’ve been wasting my time? Maybe. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Man, I’m growing to hate corporate America.

President Barack Obama has promised an era of “open government.” He promised us a government that was going to be more transparent. Well, today’s revelation seems to be less transparent. It seems to be more George Bush and less candidate Obama. The White House was set to release torture photos. Somehow, at the last minute, these photos were not released. The White House stated that they did not want to further endanger our troops. Our troops are already in harm’s way. Personally, I would like for all of our troops to come home. But, if the president and his advisers have decided we need to be in Afghanistan then I will reluctantly support our president in this endeavor. I will always support our troops but I don’t see how withholding the truth, no matter how despicable that truth is, is in our best interest. Showing the world that we don’t hide our mistakes… wouldn’t that be a good thing? It seems to me, as a nation, we need to stop living a lie.

So we had the torture hearings today. I’m not exactly sure what we learned. Prominent Republicans are trying to find ways to justify the torture that was done. Prominent Democrats are outraged… at least sort of. Possibly the only major breakthrough was that a long time FBI interrogator clearly stated that torture does not work. Sen. Russ Feingold (in my opinion one of the finest senators in the Capital) stated that he would like the intelligence committee and the White House to release not only the documents that VP Cheney has asked for but many other documents. He states he’s read these documents and they clearly show that torture does not work. Again, we know this from various sources. We know that the techniques used by the CIA are intended to elicit false confessions rather than accurate, actionable intelligence.

Watch the video:

By ecthompsonmd|2009-05-13T20:59:37-04:00May 13th, 2009|Al Qaeda, Bush Administration, Obama administration, Senate, Torture|Comments Off

Yang to step down at Yahoo!

Remember back in 2000 when AOL bought Time Warner? There was a lot of speculation at the time regarding the wisdom of AOL. Remember also that AOL, Amazon.com and Yahoo! were the titans of Wall Street at that time. They were worth billions and billions of dollars. Well, eight years later, AOL proves to be the smartest of the bunch. Amazon.com attached themselves to traditional stores like Target. It was Yahoo! that thought they were smart enough to keep the good times rolling.

Yahoo stock traded above $400 per share in 2000. Currently Yahoo is trading at $12 per share. This is well below the $33 per share that Microsoft offered Yahoo! earlier this year. Founder and CEO Jerry Yang has offered to step down. Which, in my opinion, is too little, too late. Mr. Yang missed multiple golden opportunities. He could have invested in a cable company as they were developing broadband access. He could have invested in Dell computers or Hewlett Packard. He could’ve invested in just about anything with the exception of AIG and Bear Stearns… (oh, or the auto industry), and come out ahead of where he is now.

This is a video from a few months ago. An investor and friend of Jerry Yang sing the praises of Yang.

By ecthompsonmd|2008-11-18T11:46:47-04:00November 18th, 2008|Economy|Comments Off