Bush, a failure at everything he has touched in life, commands a

[KlatooBNikto]

following of supply siders, religious nuts and Israel Firsters.Carly Fiorina, another con woman, wrecks a perfectly well managed and much admired company like H-P with her grandiose schemes, walks away with a golden parachute and is quite likely to land at another firm as a CEO spouting business management drivel and wreck another company, only to be praised sky high by the business Press sycophants. In the meantime, Bush and his wrecking crew are going to make life miserable for our seniors and if they fail at their schemes find something even more vile that will wreck their lives in their golden years.

Two of a kind? you tell me.

[kaitykaity]

1. Huh?

Nope.

Carly's board forced her out. She's outta there.

Bush scrawnly little ass is still wedged firmly in the WH,
surrounded by suckups and bootlickers who have convinced
him he is God walking on earth.

[KlatooBNikto]

2. Carly was forced out only after the board swallowed her hokum for a long

time allowing her to wreck the company irretrievably IMO.She has already presided over the exit of long time managers critical to HP's success over the years.

[kaitykaity]

3. But she's out, no?

Bush isn't.

And I don't think HP's as wrecked as you're
making it out do be.

[KlatooBNikto]

6. Go and read Business Week's excellent article titled, what else?

WHO CAN SAVE H-P?

[kaitykaity]

8. Link would be nice.

Was this one of the hack pieces before she was ousted?
The board wanted to spread some of her responsibility
out to some of the other managers and she told them no?
That's the showdown that led her to leave I believe.

The Compaq merger didn't go that well and their PC business
has suffered, but they're still top line on printing and
imaging.

Look, I know this company, okay? Leave it at that.

[KlatooBNikto]

9. I do too. I have two sons who are senior managers at HP.

At the moment I do not have the link, but will get it for you in a while after dinner.You will note especially that HP's market capitalization is now entirely based on the performance of its printing division, where Dell is mounting a serious charge.This reminds me of the days before Kodak's collapse.Let us face it. Printers, Computers, Digital Cameras are all becoming commodities and unless HP gets with it and learns to match manufacturing prowess with Dell, it will be a goner.

[kaitykaity]

10. "Will be a goner" is the thing. Not "is a goner."

Look, I'm not saying the company doesn't have some
issues, but along with the printers, their server
business is pretty good, and the deal with Apple and
iPod is a winner as well.

The problem is they don't really have an identity
anymore. Are they enterprise or are they consumer,
et cetera, high-end, mid-market, low-end, what?
They have to figure that out.

Will watch out for the link.

[KlatooBNikto]

11. Carly's forays into the server market and her deal with Compaq

diluted the efforts needed to get H-P acclimated to the era of commoditization of all their product lines. The server market is fast becoming a loser for H-P. The printer market does not have much time, critical time that was lost because of Carly's prima donna act.

Your statement about iPod is humorous. A visionary like Jobs builds Apple from the ground up and has a hot product on his hands. I hope Steve Jobs doesn't make a bid for H-P in its dying days.

[kaitykaity]

14. What do you mean by commoditization exactly?

That they're not selling aftermarket stuff like service
and maintenance, not selling seats and renewals,
that sort of thing?

They feel pretty good about their server business, so
I'd like to see some sequential market share numbers to
bear out the assertion that it's becoming a loser.

It's going to take a lot more than just the ouster of
the CEO -- decreasing margins, sequential quarters of
net losses, lowered operating revenue, et cetera -- to
convince me they don't have time to take stock and make
the right decisions to get moving again.

[KlatooBNikto]

16. Commoditization means exactly the kind of things you have written

about.It means eroding margins, which, in the case of the PC market is now a reality.H-P could not make any inroads in the high end server market and is now forced to compete with Dell in the low end server market.As a result, that market is a dead end. You can see the eroding EPS results in the stock price of HP which is hovering in the $20 range.Many analysts are predicting a bad first quarter 2005. I can see red ink soon and that is why I said it will be a goner sooner than we think.The Board took the only action it could but I am afraid it may be already too late. Another American icon is going to bite the dust to satisfy the ego of a conwoman.The best thing to happen to HP would be a break up and sale of the assets in pieces.

[kaitykaity]

17. Well, they ousted their CEO. Of course they're going to have

a bad first quarter 2005.

And the board has more options than just ousting
Carly -- divesting their unprofitable business lines
is just one example and could be the next move. I
know they merged the PC business in with Printing
recently.

It's more a matter of market share rather than the
condition of the balance sheet. You know, adjusting
for the Dell juggernaut and IBM's resurgence.
The organization seems solid and has good management.
They just have to figure out who they are in this
new IT world.

[KlatooBNikto]

13. Here is your link.

CAN ANYONE SAVE HP NOW?

http://www.biz.yahoo.com

[kaitykaity]

15. Not a good link.

:shrug:

"Can not find server"

[Eric J in MN]

4. The point is that CEOs of big companies get golden parachutes

so even when they're forced to resign, it's not like when someone who hasn't been placed above the rest of us has to resign.


For them, resigning is like winning the lottery for anyone else.

[kaitykaity]

5. No, the point was they're two of a kind.

I pointed out how they were different.

And for CEO's it's all about ego and competitiveness.
You can't say that being forced out by the board isn't a
humiliation.

And it's not like Carly's the hot property she was when
she took over HP.

There's more to it than just the $$$.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

12. Agreed. It is bogus. America as a society has decreed that if you are

in the exalted ranks of CEOs, no matter what your performance, even if your company loses billions and lays off tens of thousands, you will get millions, nay, tens of millions, either way.

You are just entitled to the money no matter what.

I'll take the "shame of failure/getting fired" for a deal like that, any day.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

7. America as a society is not much into accountability these days,

particularly not for rich people and presidents. Been that way for a while now but much worse now.