Forum Moderators: phranque
Here what was happen at mid-day in New York. Microsoft was trading at $50 a share, Oracle under $10, Sun at $4.25 and AOL/Time Warner the Netscape parent at $11.25. Cost cutting in the industry erassed half a million it/consulting jobs in the last 12 months. Thousands of smaller technology companies have felt the sting of cut budgets and cancelled projects. We are still importing foreign information technology people under special legislation that set an artificially high limit during the dot.com bubble. Consulting rates in the New York City area are running at the 1980's level.
Isn't time for some sound business judgements are made to help jump start the floundering information technology economy before some of the big players bite the dust?
Has anyone any recommendations?
What are the alternatives? If MS shares Windows, then we will have 15 Operating Systems competing against each other, each with different quirks. Will software developers write 15 versions of their programs? Three is difficult enough.
AT&T had a telephone monopoly for many years, and during that time, the technology and user interface became standardized. Eventually, we all learned to dial 7 digits to make a local call, 10 for long distance. We didn't have to worry about whether my friend's phone was compatible with my phone, or which version of the software my phone was running.
Desktops and the internet are still in their infancy. I say let MS take over the OS market completely for about 30 years, Bill can buy Africa, then, once a reliable standard is in place, break it up.
It's a good thing I don't run the Justice Department though, because I'm not entirely convinced my plan is any better than theirs. I don't have the answers, and we certainly can't let MS grow at the expense of other players.
Better minds than mine are struggling with this one.
My example of the granting of technical visas is against the guest workers. The concept is that the US economy benefits by these workers being here rather than having the same work outsourced overseas. Our Balance of Payments which is at an all time high is not impacted as badly because these workers spend part of their earnings in the US.
The long protracted anti-trust suit has contributed to unemployment and a lose of wealth. 7.7 Trillion overall lost in market capitalization since March 2000, some part of which is in the technology sector. Three-quarts of a billion was lost last week! CNNMoney is talking of the Crash of 2002. Lehman Brothers is saying that 1.5% has been erased from the growth of the economy.
US technology jobs have shrunken a half million jobs in the past 12 months. The bad news goes on and on. Will Sun and I2 be around next year? What about Gateway?
In a managed economy like the US, government can fiddle with somethings and keep hands off others. If the are increasing the numbers of workers in the country then they must ensure that there is work.
If they fiddle with competition then they must ensure that the impact of there intervention does not overwhelm the industry.
What we have now is an anti-trust suit that is freezing investment in technology, an increase of guest workers, a huge shrinkage in technology employment,and Balance of Payment problems.
This is happening in the worst market slump since the Great Depression. Leading up to the Great Depression the economy seemed like it was in great shape right up to the time when the stock brokers started jumping out windows.
What we have now is an anti-trust suit that is freezing investment in technology, an increase of guest workers, a huge shrinkage in technology employment,and Balance of Payment problems.
I really don't think the Anti-Trust suit has anything to do with the crashing stock market. As part of the dot-com bubble, accountants became very creative and convinced people that Amazon.com was worth over $100/share without ever having made a dime of profit.
Regular companies caught on and starting legally cooking their books in questionable ways. Enron and Worldcom are just the most popular of the fraudulent companies to come into the forefront. There will be more.
When Enron and Worldcom have to lay off 25,000 people, and Nortel had to lay of close to 50,000 (is that correct), the economy will slump.
The break up of ATT didn't have an effect on the economy, and neither does the anti-trust suit against Microsoft.
