Intel, AMD financials: Bad news for Obama campaign Nothing affects the outcome of a US presidential election more than the state of the economy, and if Barack Obama heard the comments made by Intel and AMD execs when they announced their company's earnings this week, he may very well have broken into a flop sweat. "As we look ahead to the second half of this year, consumer …
Do realize that Romney's campaign staff quite dishonestly quoted Obama out of context -- so much so that the antecedent of the pronoun "that" is made to appear to be "business", which in Obama's original words it most certainly isn't.
Here's what Obama actually said – make your own judgement as to Romney's honesty: " "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
Even without the context it's clear that "that" can hardly refer to "business". At least, not in any variety of English that I am familiar with. For purely grammatical reasons. So, unless Romney is specifically targeting non-native speakers of English ...
Excellent. Could not have said it better.
They ran the economy over a cliff and have been sitting on the sidelines frustrating every effort to pull it back.
Just so unfortunate that their support base are so dumb as not understand that the President did not cause the economic problems or the over 10 trillion increase in the national debt.
Now its time to vote them back in to solve the problems they created with more of the policies that created the problem in the first place.
> Just so unfortunate that their support base are so dumb as not understand that the President did not cause the economic problems or the over 10 trillion increase in the national debt.
Not singlehandedly, no.
But Narcissus-in-Chief didn't exactly help. He listened to his economic advisors and thought he could influence the economy ("just another switchboard with dials; we can handle that...."). Instead, it's on a par with the Utter Fail level of FDR and the New Deal, followed by the New New Deal, followed by War. The latter looking increasingly more likely. Might not stay "regional" either, but at least now we have nukes, there won't be so much pointless drama. We can solve our differences rather quickly.
"Just so unfortunate the President's support base is so dumb as not understand that the President had full control of three executive branches for 4 years, did not fix the economic problems and ran record deficit to push the national debt to soon over 16 trillion."
There, I fixed that for you.
Wow, the pro Obama crowd is slamming everyone who dares point out that Dear leader makes Jimmy Carter look like a great president!
Well just to add my own modding down as a badge of honor everyone should come to the southern USA to see what an absolute failure Obama has been. He has just recently given another 800,000 illegals a free pass, on top of blocking any and all attempts by the states to stop the absolute joke that is our southern border so our crime rates are shooting through the roof, we have huge crime ridden barrios all over the place, and our jails are filling up with "No habla law" types.
Everyone needs to remember for every one that comes over looking for a job (which frankly should be sent back, because i can tell you we have Americans so desperate for work here they are picking coke cans out of the trash for recycling just to earn enough to eat) you have 50 dope dealers, human traffickers, and gangbangers. Gee, thanks a lot Obama! For the first time in my 30 years of voting I will vote straight R in the hopes that like Carter you are a one term failure.
I'm from far South East Tennessee & all I've seen is Republicans give tax breaks to manufacturers to send our jobs offshore.
I oversee operations for a skilled manufacturing company (protype machine development) with sites in Collegedale, TN: Leetown, WV: Madison, WI & offices in Arlington, VA & Fairbanks, AK.
We just picked up some more skilled staff but we have openings if you have the CNC, CCS, EMS, greenboard lithography or HAZMAT certs. We aren't looking for uni grads. Just people that know what there on about.
HAZMAT starts at $57k annual + benefits. If you've got something to provide let me know...
Sorry friend, just a humble computer builder and repairman with two elderly parents I can't abandon or I'd have already left the area as most of my friends have. And I am not nearly as worried about offshoring as by having my throat slit by one of the MS13 style hoods from the barrios we have popping up all over the place.
Tell me friend, can you play the "Immigra!" game there? here you can, walk by any construction site and yell "Immigra" and watch it become a ghost town in less than 30 seconds, they scatter like deer. I've heard the local cops have even gone to the HS to tell them stop playing the Immigra game as they run into traffic and they worry someone is gonna get killed.
But personally i think BOTH parties suck and would be happy to sell you out if it helped their friends on wall street (or in Hollywood if its the dems, although Obama certainly didn't say boo to the banksters) and I figure sooner or later, most likely sooner, we're gonna have ourselves another depression if we aren't in the start of one now. I know that more than half our business district has been bulldozed and if it weren't for the college and all that government money flowing into it frankly this would already be an abandoned town.
"Well I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I believe the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart....hey wait a minute, there's one guy controlling both puppets!"...The Late Great Bill Hicks, and man we could use him now.
Here we have 2 companies Intel and AMD. Intel tries to sell quad core i7 for an iPad price and AMD risking everything to copy x86 with zero ARM r&d while it has no obligation or image issue like Intel. They also let Windows monopoly go on.
Result? Guy/ girl goes out and buys iPad or Android tablet.
Seriously, did you see price of i7?
If Intel switches or even shows interest in arm in this age, shareholder panic and reports from IT media will "Elop" them like Nokia.
AMD however, wouldn't have this issue, x86 isn't their technology to begin with.
Letting windows monopoly to go on is a tough one to explain, just look at Linux gpu drivers issue to begin with.
Actually AMD had a winning hand but then shot themselves right in the face. Anyone who has looked at the numbers can tell you that the Bobcat cores were selling like mad, AMD twice had to slow desktop production just to give it to the Bobcats, so what did AMD do? Did they sink plenty of R&D into the Bobcats to keep them exciting? Maybe come up with a sub 20w Bobcat quad with excellent GPU?
Nope they killed the successor to Bobcat in favor of....drumroll.....faildozer. Oh and just to compound the fail AMD never bothered to contact MSFT and tell them what they were doing so that every. single. OS. by MSFT OTHER than Win 8, which looks to be the next MS Bob, will cripple performance on anything based on faildozer thanks to the Windows scheduler not having a clue how to deal with a "half core" design like what AMD pulled.
So while I agree about Intel with AMD they had a shot at taking a huge chunk and just threw it away. Even to this day you see a lot of companies putting out E series Bobcat units even though they haven't been updated for 2 years, simply because they are such a good value for the consumers. People want low prices, good battery life, and good multimedia capability and the Bobcats fit the bill perfectly, instead they locked themselves into a chip that if Win 8 bombs won't even have a MSFT OS that will run on it without tying a boat anchor to the system. I'm just glad I built some Thubans for me and my boys when I saw the fail coming down the line because I wouldn't take a faildozer on a bet.
Intel certainly isn't doing poorly and AMD had been in the doldrums for nearly a decade and through a few CEO's. Microprocessor sales are certainly not any kind indicator of national or global financial health. Light automobile sales in the U.S. alone more than triple the global sales of processors. Hell the commercial facility cleaning industry in the U.S. is almost twice as large as the global processor industry. The sport fishing industry in the U.S. is worth $116B annually. Processors are a small part of the $15 trillion market that is the U.S.
The faulty economics often cited on El Reg are bad enough but I really, really hope that my favorite website isn't going to get into U.S. Presidential politics. There's no place for that here. Keep your political opinions to yourself or at least don't sully El Reg with them.
Seeing as the cover story of last week's Economist was about the good prospects for the American economy, this article is, indeed, flawed. Apple and IBM continue to make money hand over fist and manufacturing is recovering thanks partly to lower energy costs. But gone are the days when the fate of one company was linked to the fate of the country: "What's good for GM is good for America".
The Clinton quote is trotted out routinely and while it's not untrue, it's overly simplistic. It's exactly that simplicity which made it appealing and important. Incumbent presidents have been re-elected with the economy in a bigger mess than it is at the moment. They don't tend to do very well when they talk down to the electorate.
With the US electoral system as it stands, elections are decided by relatively small groups of voters who can be bothered to vote in the swing states. The last time I checked neither AMD nor Intel were very big in the rust belt or Florida.
May I suggest that you read the full Economist article, and not merely the leader to which you linked. It focuses mostly on America's success in expanding its exports, but begins its conclusion thusly:
"Promising though this rebalancing of the American economy is, it will bring problems of its own. One is inequality, which is already at a troubling level. America’s most successful exporters employ relatively few people. The Commerce Department reckons that even though exports last year were 14% higher than in 2008, the number of jobs supported by those exports was slightly lower."
Frankly, how successful American exporters are is relatively meaningless to the plight of the Americans who are unemployed -- and who vote.
Are you suggesting that the majority of Americans are lazy and do not want to work. That in a country where a large proportion of the population are working two or three jobs to get bay.
Did you have the same attitude towards the Republicans who created the mess in the first place and then sat on their hands when time came to try to clean it up.
Be truely patriotic. Get rid of your ignorance and start cultivating a positive attitude towards your country and country men. It is so odd that those among us who wave our flag the highest can have this negative attitude towards us as a people.
If you check statistics you will see that hard working, honest, concerned U.S. citizens are the minority while those on the gravy train are the new Majority. Those who are lazy, ignorant, naive or looking for a free lunch elected The Messiah and the other cronies and as a result the U.S. continues it's downward economic and social spiral.
I laugh when the Urrupeans now state their displeasure with The Messiah. Obviously the folks in Urrup are pretty naive if they believed a word that he spewed in his election campaign. Now that you've seen the real con artist maybe you'll wake up?
Given that they use some of the least amount of holiday and, at a guess, work more second jobs than many nations in a similar standing as the US how could they be lazy?
Oh that's right, anyone that isn't willing to be slave to their job is a lazy bastard.
Do you really think that a guy (ROMNEY) who ran a company that sliced and diced companies and laid off workers is the guy who can actually turn the economy around because he says he can? Seriously? Stop listening to the rhetoric and look at the facts. Obama inherited a mess that will take more than one term to clean up. A mess that THE REPUBLICANS MADE. Putting one of them back in office based purely on the attack ads of a MORMON PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, is the worst possible idea.
And that is why Romney needs to be kept out of the White House, in a nutshell. Bain Capital's entire schtick is buying up companies and outsourcing and dismantling them. Bain took control of Burger King, and within a few years they shuttered half of them. Bain took control of Clear Channel, and now they're laying off more and more local talent for syndi-jocks. Why are they trying to save money? To pay the debts they accrued *by* buying all these companies.
That's what Bain *is*. They are a private equity firm. That's what they do. And Romney is one of the people who created the company in 1984.
With that kind of financial record, what makes people think he'll fix the economy? He knows how to make short-term profit, but he does not know or care about the effect his financial policies have on the everyday citizen. Fixing the economy means bringing actual industry back to the USA, which means less profit for billionaires. We know he won't do it, because, when faced with similar circumstances in the private sector, he *already* didn't do it.
Obama is not perfect, but although job creation growth has slowed, at least it's still *growing*! Romney's policies would kill that growth dead and head it in the other direction again. This is why it's far far more important to vote *against* Romney than it is to vote *for* any other candidate.
Only one thing to that (excluding the ad hominem attack based on religion) is that Mr. Obama made the comment last time around that if he didn't fix things in three years, he wouldn't get a second term. (paraphrasing, as I can't get the chocolate factory or the other one that sounds like a cheap bell tower to give me the full quote from an unbiased source at the moment). I for one believe it's time to start holding ALL politicians accountable for what they promise.
"Seeing as the cover story of last week's Economist was about the good prospects for the American economy, this article is, indeed, flawed." …… Charlie Clark Posted Saturday 21st July 2012 13:33 GMT
Crikey crumbs, Charlie Clarke, you didn't/don't actually believe that puff piece in the Economist, surely? Don't you realise it is bankrupt propaganda?
You are better off believing the truth instead, which was shared by The Metaphysician, who posted on the comments thread to that tale on July 18th, 15:59 ……. This article is unmitigated nonsense and infantile wish fulfilment.
Five long years after the start of the ongoing current catastrophic collapse and has anything been changed in the system? has it been completely redesigned and all of the crooks purged from their offices? Methinks not, ergo is the rot eating further into the root and it aint gonna recover because it is brain dead, as is evidenced by the inventing of trillions more from nothing and giving it to the same intellectually challenged, rotten corrupt core as can only feed and perpetrate the mad plague virus which expects the newly minted and quantitatively eased credit to not be recognised and classified as terminal debt, which is never to be repaid.
And Blighty are also equally wilfully blind and studiously dumb to the desperate situation which the restless mob and austere masses are becoming increasingly wise to …… and who then would wish to be a banker or a politician whenever the world is full of lampposts to hang from.
Hi Mars,
this is OT to this thread, but regarding Berlusconi, I think The Economist hates him because he is doing business with Mr Putin. Britgov had plans to topple a communist Italian government if it ever came into being and it appears to me there still is lots of distrust towards Italy.
I guess Silvio is also making problems for Usgov and they bitch about that when they meet Britgov. Italy also did lots of oil deals with Lybia.
So maybe you research these "leads" if you want to get a deeper understanding why Berlusconi was depicted as the "horrible man of European politics". My verdict is that he crossed quite a few important people of UKUSA, so they decided to thoroughly smear him, which obviously succeeded in the mainstream media and its consumers.
Thanks for that, TC. It makes a lot of sense whenever one views the Bigger Bunga Picture Pictures. I wonder if Silvio is into Creative CyberSpace Command and Control of Computers and Communications ..... IT and Media Empires?
If you want to know why the whole thing is rotten and will collapse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF87sMjYlws and look closely at the charts...notice how the stock market went from something one actually invested in into this beast with over 400% of GDP floating in it?
As much as I hate the "its the gubbmint's fault" posts in this one case...it is. They are the ones that tilted the tax structure with the 401k and 403b and turned the thing into a giant bubble that WILL blow.
Some techies (and financial analysts too) don't get that a lot of average people really only use their computers to surf the web, do email, watch youtube videos and login to facebook. These are people who don't buy prepackaged software, except maybe AV software to keep their computer from getting overrun by viruses when they stupidly click on spam links promising to show them Natalie Portman naked. These are people who don't need to read, let alone create, Office documents, and in the very rare case they did Google's offerings would be more than sufficient.
This is the market that Apple and the Android makers are taking with tablets. Hell, the truly light users in this group can probably get by with just a smartphone - maybe that's part of the reason behind the trend for larger and larger smartphone screens. This is basically the market that Linux netbooks were intended to hit, but missed the mark as they were too much like what came before.
With Verizon and now AT&T offering plans that make it easy to share data between your smartphone and tablet, making the most of the tablet's much better portability, this trend will continue to accelerate. Money goes out of Intel, AMD and Microsoft's pockets, and goes into Apple and Samsung's pockets. Maybe Amazon's too if they can make a tablet that isn't just a fad like the Fire was.
Of course PCs will never die, but PC sales growth rates started declining (and are now negative for three quarters running) right about the time iPad came out. I don't think that's a coincidence.
No it's not the tablet market eating into the PC market. Tablets are an extension of the PC market not a replacement or different market. In addition all PC related companies have endured tough going with the economic woes that are ongoing. This will continue until real jobs are created.
Fine, you can claim that the tablet market and the PC market are the same market. Since many tablet customers are buying them to perform the same tasks they performed on their PCs, there may be some small justification for that view. It is certainly a view Apple fanboys like to encourage when comparing Apple's share of the PC market.
However, given that the players in the tablet market are very different from the players in the PC market, while the distinction may not be important for consumers or market research firms, it is a very important distinction when it comes to future profitability for the losers in this trend: Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Dell, and HP.
Some may argue that Intel with Atom and Microsoft with Surface may not be losers if they are successful, but they're wrong. Intel currently has 80% of the PC CPU market (and nearly 100% of the profit in this sector) Even if they somehow took 80% of the tablet CPU market they'd still emerge big losers from this trend, as the per CPU gross margin of tablet CPUs is a fraction of the gross margin for PC CPUs (low tens of dollars versus low hundreds of dollars) Microsoft currently has 90% of the PC OS market. There is no possible scenario where they take even a fraction of that share of the tablet market. Most think that the few analysts who project them to take a double digit share of the market are wildly optimistic. Everything they are doing suggests that at this point they are circling the wagons and trying to defend the corporate space. These devices will not be priced to be competitive in the consumer market. I suspect they'll be priced above iPad, more than double what Android tablets will be selling at.
Gentlemen, and Loving Ladies of course,
This is not the tablet market eating into the PC market, it is the SMARTR IntelAIgent Browser with MetaDataMining Search Engine Abilities for Present Displaying of Novel Evolutionary and Disruptive Revolutionary Information and Comment via all such devices/BIOSystems, [which are all just as modified, newer versioned clones of each other] that are taking over Systems Administrations ......... and preparing y'all for a Future Fundamentally Different with New Levels of Social Engagement, Engineering and EMPowerment/Man Management via Great Virtual Games Plays
In that quite simple way, is the Past quickly removed from memory to allow the Future its rightful place in SMARTR and more educated societies/lands/jurisdictions/worlds/nations/call them what you will.
Does anyone have an email address for the officer responsible/Point of Contact, for the recently launched UK £40billion Government Guarantee scheme, to cover a billion pound lnvestment in what is a Surreal IT Energising Growth Project in a Controlled CyberSpace Program/InterNetional Infrastructure Plan which kickstarts into Life and Real Life and Primitive Human Consciousness, Live Operational Virtual Environments, which may be somewhat Alien Virtual Terrain Team Territory to many, and maybe even most of you. But that ignorance however, is easily remedied and removed with simple comprehensive and easy to understand instruction in that which is discovered and uncovered recently.
Knock.knock, David C and George O, Vince C and Nick Clegg ......... Time to make a decision which will either make you or destroy you. England expects .... and all that.
Re: "Even El Reg is turning on Obama!"
I find it difficult to see how this article is "turning on Obama". It appears to me to be a rather straightforward bit of opinion based on the rather straightforward fact that the poorer the economy, the more Obama is blamed for it.
If anything, the article appears to be a bit snarky about Richie Rich Romney, not Obama.
And we know......why that is. Honestly, it's rapidly turning from a decent techie news source to a neocon fanzine. .... Posted Sunday 22nd July 2012 14:55 GMT by nichomach
Methinks, nichomach, all those losers posting paid for negative comments on fora, .... and here is an educational article on the subject, courtesy of John Young's, Cryptome site, The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies ...... are more than a tad concerned whenever the likes of a decent El Reg techie news source recognises the Unassailable Leading Advantages of Venturing with Thin Mobile Invisible Clients into Novel Original Realms of Free Radical Fundamental Existentialist Thinking, lest they decide to grasp the bull by the horns and lead with supplied remote control leads/feeds/seeds.
*And yet Man struggles to believe what he doesn't yet know for the perverse corrupt comfort of a primitive past which is never going to return in its earlier phorms.
Posting with your name doesn't make your POV any more valid than someone who posts with an alias or anonymously.
Either you POV has merit or it doesn't. As far as economics and politics go there is worldwide economic pain for many but that doesn't include any politicians that I know of. They are all on the public dole one way or the other. If they get booted from office for their inept actions or apathy, then so be it. Don't let the door hit them in the arse on the way out.
No. If you are anonymous it makes it much easier to make inflammatory comments with no proof or justification (just for the LULZ aka 'kiddie trolling').
There's a reason politicians don't listen to the Internet and it's because they don't have to. People use pseudonyms to disguise themselves and by doing so they completely lose any democratic input they are entitled to.
If someone is posting just for fun then it's different; but if people want to make a difference and make a stand for what they believe in their are only two choices: Use your real name to initiate a discourse with your representative/MP or stage a revolt. I doubt that many of the 'AC's' on the Internet have the stones to revolt so they'll be much better off 'manning up' and letting their leaders know what they think and using their real name.
Looking at Intel server chip prices over the past few years ... There is serious Price Gouging going on at a Feverish level.
Keep in mind that's just the Processor not a Server.
Intel Xeon E7-2870 = TRAY: $4,227
Intel Xeon E7-4870 = TRAY: $4,394
Intel Xeon E5-4650 = TRAY: $3,616
Data centers have got to be fed up with playing Intel's game. So they wait it out!!!
Why do you think HP made a statement some months back they were considering selling there Computer business? ....They where fed up with Intels price gouging .... They must have got the deal they wanted, but G do you have to threaten Intel just to get them to the table to negotiate.
The language used seems to have a political calculation. Economies are not slowing. OK China is not growing at the dizzying heights of growth it was (but it used to be that economists were concerned about too much growth). No economies are flat. Here in the UK it's been +/- 0.3 since 2008. The politicians want to tell you (via their forecasts) that growth will resume the next year. Company execs like Otellini want to believe in those growth forecasts so they are able to show shareholders ever larger profits and, so, keep their jobs.
So it's not true to say that economies are slowing. This is an untruth: they are flat. Flat economies are a problem now because so many past contracts were priced assuming there would always be jam tomorrow. That future growth would bridge the gap in pension provision, etc. So now a larger proportion of cash in the economy is being used to service ever increasing levels of debt which means there's less available to buy more crap. So from the perspective of Intel et al it may have the impression that economies are slowing. But it's false. There comments are just a self serving exercise in "don't blame me" unsupported by publicly available facts.
"So now a larger proportion of cash in the economy is being used to service ever increasing levels of debt which means there's less available to buy more crap." .... Sirius Lee Posted Monday 23rd July 2012 08:46 GMT
Hi, Sirius Lee,
You got that totally wrong and almost right and what needs to be said is, and it is best if you shout it, so more than just a privileged few can hear it clearly ..... SO NOW A LARGER PROPORTION OF CREDIT IN THE ECONOMY IS BEING USED TO SERVICE EVER INCREASING LEVELS OF DEBT WHICH MEANS THERE'S LESS AVAILABLE CASH TO BUY MORE CRAP ......... SO WHO'S POCKETING THE CASH AND INCREASING THEIR ELECTRONIC STASH?
@Don Jefe I agree, our business is still pretty decent and expected to get better next year. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that certain companies are deliberately holding back pending the election as they often do.
There seems to be an increasing mindset that certain business owners will do anything to make Obama look bad; up to and including cutting off their nose to spite their own faces. The problem is that ALL of us suffer as a result.
@Jeebus, I couldn't agree more about the AC postings...there is a reason why they are called anonymous cowards. There is NO PLACE for religious or other types of Bigotry but one must be cognizant of the fact that the Republican party is one of the most religiously bigotted political creatures there is. We are seeing the rise of NeoCon McCarthyism combined with outright libel and slander.
Some AC's are promoting the "You didn't build your business" lie and others are countering it. Unfortunately, this lie is still being promoted by the New McCarthyites on Fox News and elsewhere.
One thing is certain, it and the person promoting it have no place on El Reg.
I agree with most of the comments regarding politicising the EL Reg forums except that any discussion about the economy today, will inevitably have to include the politics behind the economy.
Let the inevitable downvotes begin.
You can't expect the U.S. to have a strong economic base with a mentality of a free lunch for many that the working class must pay for. The wealthy can bypass most taxes and the poor have no income to tax so that leaves the middle class to fund the country's operations. When you over-tax the middle class they no longer have sufficient discretionary income to support economic growth via consumption and the economy enters a downward spiral. This is economics 101 folks.
I've seen some major I.T. spending being held off at my work for over 24 months. Sure there is the Healthcare law that put jitters in people spending. But I actually overheard C-Level staff state things that they did not want to invest in our I.T. until Obama was out of office. Sadly, running on 6-10 year old servers is not the wisest thing I've ever heard of. What do you mean the Financial Software is running on NT 4.0!?!?!?!?
The vast majority of big finance is run on a FORTRAN backbone and those 'UNIX mainframe things from IBM' with current "fun code" added on to facilitate sloppy code changes for newbie coders. New software and hardware are not required to sustain the industry. NT 4x is a pretty advanced for a lot of big companies.
Also I'm gonna call bullshit that you are in finance and ever heard someone in senior management say something like that where a peon could overhear it. It just doesn't work that way. Either you were part of the management team (which makes you a traitor to be shot if you tell secrets you've heard) or you're just a disgruntled overpaid techie. You pick.
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