And that’s why Watson is doing weather on the 8s. They let him crawl the web and it read the same websites that gave Wesley Snipes tax advice. This just in: As long as money can be borrowed for free, management will continue to focus on buybacks instead of R&D or capex to the detriment of topline growth. IBM may have taken its first baby steps back away from the buyback fad, but it may be too little, too late. Even Wall Street, which basically invented the practice, isn’t infinitely patient. I wonder if this is about double-billing clients? When I worked there, they would bill clients for full-time dedicated operators on their mainframe systems, but we were put on multiple systems (2 – 3) at a time. This was SOP from management down to the grunts. Doubtful — billing tends to be contractually defined between entities and would be not something that would warrant an SEC investigation. It sounds like they are investigating the timing of revenue recognition. The SEC probably suspects that IBM is recognizing revenue in the billing period and not in the period when the services are delivered. And yes, I’m an accountant. There are no shortage of companies whose letter grade executives are clueless, but none of them hold a candle to the ones “running” IBM. “Quick! Another acquisition to hide declining revenues!” “More share buybacks to hide our cratering earnings per share!” Add into the mix a stunning paranoia about getting sued and you have the perfect storm of incompetent corporate immobility. I don’t foresee a 90s style turnaround. How this is going to play out is not going to be pretty. Huge things coming in for rough landings can result in a lot of victims, both with people aboard and those on the ground.