Tag Archive for Recession

RB | April 5, 2009
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Tech Layoffs Continue to Mount

351,202 families’ lives have been disrupted in the tech sector since October 2008, when the  banks lead us into the current depression recession economic downturn.  32,820 lay-offs have been announced in the tech sector during March 2009. The tech layoff leaders for March 2009 are:

The March total is the lowest since the depression recession economic downturn started.

  • February 2009 = 48,064
  • January 2009 = 150,014
  • December 2008 = 36,278
  • October 2008 = 50,204

This does not include the chaos that the President Obama’s abandonment of the working class, by sending GM and Chrysler into likely bankruptcy. We are seeing the further dismemberment of the middle class as Chrysler has outsourced its IT to India’s  Tata Consultancy Services in “a multi-year contract” worth about $120 million.

Chrysler’s remaining  2,100- person information technology department, mostly in Auburn Hills, MI will immediately loose 200 salaried technology workers. The balance of the layoffs will come from the ranks of contract workers in that department. They will leave in greater numbers, but Jan Bertsch Chrysler vice president and chief information officer didn’t offer specifics in the Detroit News article. Some employees may be hired by Tata or Computer Sciences, she said, and some work will be moved entirely off-site. According to the media, Tata will provide support, maintenance and services that “will encompass a portion of the functional areas within Chrysler, such as Sales and Marketing and Shared Services.”

Category: Business, Layoffs, Out-sourcing | Tags: , ,
RB | March 31, 2009
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IBM Cuts Staff, Seeks Stimulus

IBM is slated to lay-off 5,000 high-skill U.S. workers in its Global Business Services unit, transferring some of the work they performed to India, according to media reports. The cuts will affect mainly information technology and consulting work in such areas as customer relations management and supply chain management, says Lee Conrad, national coordinator of Alliance@IBM,

Armonk NY based IBM has been eliminating U.S based jobs for many years. IBM has previously reduced U.S. employment by 6,000 workers in 2008. Since 2003, the company has hired approximately 90,000 people in India and more than 5,000 in Brazil to do IT and business-process outsourcing [BPO] services work.

IBM is working to secure pieces of the give-away American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 $787 billion stimulus measure enacted in February. IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano was one of 13 executives who met with President Barack Obama in January in an appearance aimed at pressuring the House of Representatives to pass the economic stimulus bill. IBM is seeking a share of the $8 billion the U.S. plans to spend on high-speed rail and part of the $20 billion in the stimulus plan to digitize the U.S. health-care system. as well as resurrecting BPL as earlier noted here The give-away American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes $11 billion to be spent on ‘smart grid‘ systems to monitor and manage the nation’s electrical network.

According to CIO Today some economists have estimated that taxpayers are paying an average of $225,000 for each job created in the economic stimulus package. According to Martin Kenney, a professor of political economy at the University of California, Davis,: “Taxpayers are saying, ‘I don’t want to give them money if they’re moving jobs offshore.’”

rb- The give-away American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is turning out to be a $787 billion bailout of dubious firms like AIG and IBM and just keeps getting worse and worse for those of us who still work in America.

Category: Layoffs, Out-sourcing | Tags: , ,
RB | March 27, 2009
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Copper Prices Headed Up Again

Copper prices are on the upswing again and could be taking the cost of low voltage cabling with it. According to an article from MarketWatch. Copper (Cu)  finished 2008 at about half the price it started with, but lately it’s been rising thanks to China’s 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus plan. The Chinese stimulus plans are expected to kick in later this year and through to 2010 in “massive infrastructure projects,” according to Martin Hayes, an analyst at BaseMetals.com. Those projects “will use significant tonnage of base metals, including copper.”

Copper’s “often called ‘Doctor Copper’ because it takes the temperature of the global economy,” said Sean Brodrick, a natural-resources analyst at UncommonWisdomDaily.com. “According to Doctor Copper, things are improving, mainly due to Chinese demand.” Already, China’s imports of copper and alloys climbed 55% in February from January, said Brodrick.

On 02-27-2009, copper prices climbed to a four-month high of nearly $1.90 per pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

CU 60 day trend

Brent Cook, author of investment letter Exploration Insights, argued that the recent gains in copper prices may not be fundamental demand driven by consumption. “The global building and construction market is not improving,” he said. “If anything, [it] is still getting worse — ditto automobiles.” Cook goes on “I believe we are seeing a combination of a bear market rally, short-covering rally and restocking by the Chinese who have a real incentive to turn their U.S. dollar into hard assets.”

RB – It was not that long ago that China’s rush up to the Beijing Olympics drove commodities such as steel, concrete and copper way up. As I pointed out the last time CU took off, it impacts the cost of telecommunications cables and the cost of new projects. I believe that Exploration Insights Cook is right that this current run-up is part of the Chinese effort to convert the one trillion of US debt they own to something else.

China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, recently expressed concern about the safety of China’s $1 trillion investment in American government debt, the world’s largest such holding, and urged the Obama administration to provide assurances that its investment would keep its value in the face of a global financial crisis. “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets,” Wen told reporters. “To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” (www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/)

At least this run-up is not accompanied by a surge in oil prices like in 2007. For all of our sakes lets hope that CU is a leading indicator of a growing economy.

Category: China, low voltage | Tags: , ,
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