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The headline got me to click, but I fail to see how cheap interest rates makes IBM's potential cloud failure the fault of the Fed. You could argue low rates fo
by sailfast 12y ago
The headline got me to click, but I fail to see how cheap interest rates makes IBM's potential cloud failure the fault of the Fed.
You could argue low rates force the hand of some firms - the stock buyback argument made sense in the article and had me following. How a strategic decision like "Cloud is where we're going as a company" can be traced to the Fed? That's where I lose the thread. What if they had decided on another investment area? Would you be writing the same article? Would one write an "The Fed suckered Amazon into a successful cloud strategy" article?
- wpietri 12y agoI don't think it's the fault of the Fed. If somebody making $16 million a year can't be held responsible for their choices, it's a sad world we live in. But I do think cheap money has let IBM coast a little. Our business culture has a theory, one I think mainly dumb, that if we tie executive rewards to stock prices, they'll do good things for their companies. In this case, cheap money lets them get paid without doing anything useful.