[James C. Bennett]

Generally I agree, however, part of the problem is the owners are essentially silent partners who aren't exercising due diligence. If the owners really wanted to make money they'd ship executive management to India. The people at the top of the food chain at IBM are completely clueless and not delivering value.

So clueless, their stock prices have been maintaining a long-term upward trajectory for years now?

[Straight Vermonter]

So clueless, their stock prices have been maintaining a long-term upward trajectory for years now?

...and they pay a nice dividend.

[FredZarguna]

So clueless, their stock prices have been maintaining a long-term upward trajectory for years now?

If the money had somewhere else to go ... if the Fed wasn't pumping ... would IBM making money?

From Forbes

[during the last 18 months]IBM stock has risen at a 7.1% annual rate. But in the last year, the S&P 500 has spiked 24.2% while IBM stock has eked out a mere 4.4% gain.

It hasn't gotten better since that article was written in June. Here's IBM performance vs. the S&P:

The truth is, IBM is a dying company. ALL of their profitability over the last five years has come from cutting staff, cutting costs, and even cutting contractors.

The truth is shareholders can get that kind of performance from guys who ask for $300K/year, so why pay people who make $8.3 million? And apparently, Ginni agrees with me, and not with you, since she has done nothing but sell her shares of IBM since 2011.

But please, keep buying IBM, by all means. You're exactly the kind of "investor" who thinks we ought to outsource the people who actually do the work while CEO's and upper management continue to take a larger and larger share of the profits without producing any results.

Talk about clueless.