TechWeek: The Trouble With Being Microsoft

As you can tell from the mug shot, I've been around for a while, and I've been thinking about a story I covered back in the early 1980s: the decimation of heavy industry in California.

The causes were legion, but remember that this was long before trade agreements such as NAFTA, outsourcing and digital technology created the global economy. Simply put, American managers, particularly those in the steel industry, traded long-term growth for short-term profits, and in the end got neither.

I'm reminded of this because of a conversation about Microsoft(MSFT Quote) I had this week with Marc Klee, a portfolio manager with American Fund Advisors. We were discussing Microsoft's announcement that it will spend approximately $2 billion more than expected in fiscal 2007, and the market's sharply negative reaction to the news. ...