IBM Sells PC Unit to China's Lenovo

[Career Prole]

BEIJING (Reuters) - Tech giant IBM is selling its PC-making business to China's largest personal computer maker, Lenovo Group Ltd. (0992.HK), for $1.25 billion, Lenovo said on Wednesday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=749&e=1&u=/nm/20041208/bs_nm/tech_china_ibm_sale_dc

[AP]

1. They have all the money. No surprise there.

[whistle]

2. Well, there goes the neighborhood! Hey guys, the PC micro-chip

...techology is just at the root of the entire military-industrial-space weapons system that the U.S. supposedly has kept under wraps for the last 40 years, right?

Now, IBM turns over the entire operation plus all of the intellectual property rights to a country that can mobilize an entire military five times the size of the U.S., swing into production a heavy manufacturing base that equal to what the U.S. has today and storm across the vast Siberian landscape and former Soviet states in the southwest and right into the oil rich middle east before George W Bush could chop a cord of wood on his ranch in Crawford. Dubya is our Manchurian Candidate.

[Deja Q]

3. In this world, it's all about the money.

I'm not commenting any further, for it would be too grim.

[Jack_DeLeon]

4. All our base are belong to China....

kind of makes you wish for the good old days when we thought Japan was going to own us.

[jmatthan]

5. Just as japan bought prime concerns

in the late eighties and early nineties, many American enterprises will now go to the Chinese who are loaded with loans to America coupled with a collapsed dollar!!

Best way to get high return out of their dollar holdings. Look for many strategic companies being taken over.

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

[barb162]

6. selling our technology is the stupidest thing for our country to

allow; a free market gone wild to the detriment of the country. Selling our technology should be forbiddenIf we can regulate and /or break up monopolies, we can regulate against this kind of thing.

[mmonk]

7. Corporate rule

Aren't these corporations true patriots?

[Career Prole]

8. New article with additional details here...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041208/ap_on_bi_ge/ibm_pc_business&e=1

"For employees, this represents an opportunity to join a vibrant and growing company and for investors this agreement represents an opportunity to reap the rewards of a growing company in a growing market."

I've seen this quote with slight variations on four occasions when companies I've worked for were sold, and each time it was only 50% correct.

The first bit should read "For employees this represents an opportunity to join a vibrant and growing company, and we wish you great success in finding one."

[eridani]

9. An old story

www.counterpunch.org/stclair10252003.html

Magnequench is an Indianapolis-based company. It specializes in the obscure field of sintered magnetics. Essentially, it makes tiny, high-tech magnets from rare-earth minerals ground down into a fine powder. The magnets are highly prized by electronics and aviation companies. But Magnequench's biggest client has been the Pentagon.

But the Pentagon may soon be sending its orders for these parts to China, instead of Indiana. On September 15, Magnequench shuttered its last plant in Indiana, fired its 450 workers and began shipping its machine tools to a new plant in China. "We're handing over to the Chinese both our defense technology and our jobs in the midst of a deep recession," says Rep. Peter Visclosky, a Democrat from northern Indiana.

It gets stranger. Magnequench is not only moving its defense plants to China, it's actually owned by Chinese companies with close ties to the Chinese government.

Dr. Peter Leitner is an advisor to the Pentagon on matters involving trade in strategic materials. He says that the Chinese targeted Magnequench in order to advance their development of long-range Cruise missiles. China already holds a monopoly on the rare-earth minerals used in the manufacturing of the missile magnets. The only operating rare-earth mine is located in Batou, China.

"By controlling access to the magnets and the raw materials they are composed of, US industry can be held hostage to Chinese blackmail and extortion," Leitner told Insight magazine last year. "This highly concentrated control-one country, one government-will be the sole source of something critical to the US military and industrial base."

[0rganism]

10. Well, that's another 100,000 computer scientists and IT specs out of work

Too bad for us, I guess.