Memory Tweak

[Michael Hipp]

Jerry McBride wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 February 2008 08:30:59 pm Leon Goldstein wrote:
>> The big news of M$'s buyout of Yahoo is getting a lot of attention in
>> the media, but nobody has mentioned the ads M$ ran on TV 1-2 years ago
>> proclaiming its development of a search engine technology that would
>> leave everything else in its dust.
>>
>> Does the Yahoo buyout effort signify a major expensive failure which M$
>> may be trying to cover up?
> 
> Well something IS going on for sure... MSFT offered $44.6 billion for Yahoo 
> while microsofts cash reserve is "only" $17 billion. MSFT stated that they 
> would have to take a loan to fully implement the buyout. Where did the money 
> go? Last I heard, back in the good old days, they had like a $60 billion cash 
> reserve... 
> 
> How do you burn through so much capital without investors screaming bloody 
> hell? Amazing how times have changed for one of the most unfriendly of 
> businesses.
> 
> And worse yet, how do you make an offer like they have for Yahoo and not have 
> the cash onhand to do the deal? And buying another failing tech company, in 
> this economic climate is... crazy.

MS has been burning thru something like 20B per year the last few years, 
mostly in acquisitions.

And to Lonni's point: the economy of essentially the entire world is in the 
process of collapsing. Don't be fooled by seeming exceptions here and there.

The US and (somewhat more recently) most of the industrialized world has been 
living in a dream world of economic bubbles fueled by worthless paper currency.

Michael