So pretty much everything was down including their margin. This once again confirms the crappy economic environment in the U.S., Asia and Europe. It's going to be years more before things get substantially better.

JorgeSo pretty much everything was down including their margin. This once again confirms the crappy economic environment in the U.S., Asia and Europe. It's going to be years more before things get substantially better.

more like everything will keep going downhill until another world war breaks out to settle things

sergionographymore like everything will keep going downhill until another world war breaks out to settle things

Or until the EU breaks up...

Well run countries will get tired of propping up countries that are run into the ground.

The current worldwide economic meltdown isn't going to be salvaged by a war to stimulate the worldwide economies. This problem is caused by bad government (at least in the U.S.), financially greedy companies exporting jobs to third world countries so the CEOs receive greater, more outrageous compensation, Wall Street breaking the rules and excessive waste, particularly in the U.S.

Intel is definitely one of the larger unscrupulous companies based on their history of anti-trust violations in numerous countries and tax fraud, all of which they have been convicted of.

JorgeThe current worldwide economic meltdown isn't going to be salvaged by a war to stimulate the worldwide economies. This problem is caused by bad government (at least in the U.S.), financially greedy companies exporting jobs to third world countries so the CEOs receive greater, more outrageous compensation, Wall Street breaking the rules and excessive waste, particularly in the U.S.

Intel is definitely one of the larger unscrupulous companies based on their history of anti-trust violations in numerous countries and tax fraud, all of which they have been convicted of.

Absolutely right.

And to expand on what you've said, the economic insecurity in the U.S. created by the flow of manufacturing jobs to Asia over the last 30 years has finally created a critical mass of very disgruntled, formerly middle-class people. Then we wonder why people go on shooting sprees and blow things up. When you take away somebody's future--when take away their jobs and their livelihood and you kill their only way of accessing a middle-class way of life, and give them sh!t all in return, you start to get VERY angry people.

How did this all start? The Regan Repulicans (like their Conservative brethren in Canada, the U.K. and Europe) hated labour unions. They couldn't bring themselves to incorporate unions into the process like Germany does, as an equal partner at the negotiating table; they just wanted to kill them off. So they adopted the Margaret Thatcher policy of busting unions by signing free trade agreements that made it all but inevitable that entire factories would be moved lock, stock and barrel to Asia and Mexico. If a factory simply closes and moves to Asia, there's nothing a labour union can do about it. The problem is, there's no other way to pay people solid middle-class wages on a large scale but manufacturing. Not everybody can be a waiter or a cab driver, or alternately, a doctor or a lawyer (although god knows, in the U.S., you've certainly TRIED to have a country where practically everybody is either a cab driver, a waiter or a lawyer or a doctor!)

The big secret is that, to have a middle class, you have to have a healthy manufacturing sector. You have to be able to turn $100 worth of metal into a $1000 value-added item or a $20,000 car, or $100 of wood into a finished dinining room table worth $500, etc, in order to pay large numbers of workers $30-$50/hour wages with benefits. So the right-wing hatred of labour unions has created a scenario where the United States, the U.K., and to a high degree, Canada, have all traded their long-term economic security for a few decades of being able to buy cheap crap at WallMart. And the baby boomers all voted for this, because toasters went from $60 for a domestically made Westinghouse, to $15 for a made-in-China piece of crap. Yay! Cheap crap for everybody! Everybody got horny for all this cheap crap, and they looked the other way when their neighbours of 20 years suddenly got laid off and lost their homes. "It's not MY problem," they told themselves. "Too bad for him! Lucky it wasn't ME." Trouble is, YOU were next, and you did nothing but vote for more free trade. Now, there's nobody left to buy the cheap crap at Walmart, because they were all laid off their $30-$50/hour manufacturing jobs, and now they work at Walmart for minimum wage if they have a job at all.

Only way out of this mess is to rip up these free trade agreements, bring the manufacturing back to North America and Europe that we still can, and impose tariffs and duties on cheap Chinese junk unless/until they raise THEIR labour and enivronmental standards up to our level, instead of expecting us to LOWER our standards down to THEIR non-existent levels. I don't care how hard this sounds, it's the only way out of this mess. That, and, in the case of the United States, you're going to need a national sales tax of 5%-7%, like every other civilized Western nation has, and you're going to want to adopt a universal healthcare system like Canada's so you don't have 40-50 million Americans with chronic anxiety that they'll be made bankrupt if they get sick, since they've got no health insurance. When you do that to people, you make them desparate, and when people are desparate, you'd BETTER damned well care, because you're all armed with guns in the U.S.

Not giving a sh!t about your fellow countrymen is not an option in a country where there's more guns than people. The U.S. could learn a thing or two from the Germans. Look at their voting system (it's really democratic, with a proportionally-elected parliament). Look at their manufacturing (their government considers a healthy manufacturing sector a matter of national security -- they will not ALLOW another country's businesses to buy BMW or Mercedes or Volkswagen; they simply say 'no', because they know how crucial those manufacturers are to their economic well-being). In Germany, the government sits down with manufacturers and labour unions and acts as a mediator, ensuring that neither side railroads the other, because they know it is a matter of national security that they get along. The Germans know there's more at stake if unions get too powerful, or if corporations get too powerful, so they rely on their democratically-elected government to act as referee. The United States, Canada and the U.K., on the other hand, have a 'every man for himself' mentality when it comes to their corporations and unions. They ignore serious problems, and say that it's 'not the government's business.' And probably, there's good reason for us not to trust our governments in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., because they're not real democracies. They all use plurality voting systems that don't ensure representation in proportion to the actual levels of voter support. 39.6% of the vote in Canada, for example, gives the Conservative Party 55% of the seats in parliament, and therefore, 100% of the power for 4-5 years, even though 60% of Canadians DIDN'T WANT the Conservatives. So more people voted against them than for them, and yet they're the government. No wonder people are angry and frustrated. Most people didn't vote for the government, and don't support their policies!!!