From Washington, Marketplace's John Dimsdale explains why. Rockefeller, Buffett, Soros and Gates. Congressional leaders say they still have the votes to get rid of death taxes. But supporters maintain it will be approved sometime this year. In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace.
Weak profits are the catalyst.
While analysts say this is one more sign of a slowing economy and expected shakeouts, in the long term, the computer manufacturing sector is still on pretty solid ground. Today's announcement comes on the heels of a hiring freeze by Cisco systems, a major computer networking equipment manufacturer. Let's face it, this is still a pretty robust replacement business. In other words businesses come around and replace the PC's they have every few years. It's just not growing as fast as it used to.