Merger Mania

Business 2.0's Om Malik writes on CNN Money: "The proposed $34 billion merger of two telecom hardware makers, Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, is like the firing of the starting gun for an industrywide race to consolidate. Whoever crosses the finish line first will have the upper hand in a vastly transformed telecom landscape. A vast number of smaller equipment makers will be swallowed up. And we might even see more megadeals, like Cisco buying Motorola." Wow! We will be exporting middle managers soon to the world, since all these mergers and down-sizings are giving us an excess supply. And we need to import some jobs as well.