Even easier to misinterpret the $5.5B profit without the context of 6% decline in revenue, and net income decline by 27%.

It's even worse when consider how much their markets have grown in the past year. A 6% decline in revenue is understandable if the target markets go down 6%, but when there's growth it's even worse.

A naive person might then ask, "$5.5 in profit? So why lay off all those people?"

Because if they lay off all those people, they might make even more profit. A public company with outside shareholders can't generally say "oh, we're making enough money, we'll leave it there" - it's got to constantly grow and constantly make more and more profit to please the shareholders which expect it to do so.

If you care about your employees, you don't let random people have a say in how your company is run for their own profit.

Why not? Don't you spend less on things when you want to save more? Do you spend all of your savings?

So you're telling me that when I buy the store brand toilet paper, I'm wreaking sudden havoc with the lives of thousands of families, all for the sake of saving some money?

I guess I better start buying Charmin. The $0.37 of savings totally isn't worth that! I mean, who could possibly have a clear conscience about leaving thousands of people in the lurch over a little bit of money?

I'm no financial analyst but I see a lot of "downs" in the Q4 earnings report: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45884.wss

Inertia in it's client base mainly. As drag forces continue to slow it down those profits will disappear.