Management consulting firm Janco Associates estimates that the flurry of news around Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America -- and separately HP with its layoffs planned around the EDS integration -- could cause the loss of some 13,000 IT-related jobs.

I was digesting that information when I came across this item about how the US is losing its competitive lead in the IT industry:

Workforce: US technology firms, like those elsewhere in the world, are experiencing shortages of skilled talent and will be adversely affected by slower increases in the number of science and engineering graduates from domestic institutions. Easing or at least avoiding further tightening of immigration restrictions on skilled workers would help US competitiveness.

So I have to ask this question: Can massive layoffs actually help US IT competitiveness by solving some of the talent shortage? Surely some percentage of these workers has the highly prized skills that are in short supply.

And in case you were wondering about the value of non-personnel IT assets to the financial sector, check out this assertion on the value of data centers:

What assets retain value in the midst of a financial panic? Data centers. When assets of bankrupt Lehman Brothers were sold to Barclays Tuesday for $1.75 billion, Lehman's data centers and headquarters accounted for $1.5 billion of the value in the deal. That echoes the JPMorgan-Bear Stearns fire sale, in which Bear's two data centers and HQ represented much of the sale price. Amidst financial turmoil, Wall Street's high-tech data centers become the crown jewels for buyers of distressed assets.

There’s a lot of discussion about the veracity of these claims, but one thing to keep in mind is that data center proximity to exchanges helps reduce latency in trading transactions, and that difference can mean millions.