IBM’s global reality

In an interesting article in the NYTimes,
IBM's optimistic and upbeat assessment for a 15%+ rise in profits in
2008 is questioned.  Answer: IBM's not reliant on the depressed
American economy but is making shedloads in the BRIC economies and from
banks.  Here's the bit that piqued my interest in particular:

"The
questions from Wall Street analysts in the conference call had a common
theme. Why are you so comfortable about the 2008 outlook? Now, that
might just be professional churlishness, since so many of them have
been so wrong recently about IBM Wall Street had understandably
thought, for example, that IBM’s sales to financial services companies
— the technology giant’s largest single customer category — would
suffer in the fourth quarter, given the way banks have been battered by
the mortgage credit crunch. But Mr. Loughridge said that revenue from
financial services customers rose 11 percent in the fourth quarter, to
$8 billion. The United States, he noted, accounts for only 25 percent
of IBM’s financial services business."

So stuff you, you Wall Street stockbashers ... we're no longer American.  We're global.