Two years ago, when I still implicitly trusted him and did not question any of his policies, President Obama named General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt to lead a President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The council will now replace the Economic Recovery Advisory Board created two years ago. Scott Paul, Alliance for American Manufacturing, comments on Huffington Post:
Let's look at GE's jobs record. You would have difficulty finding a company that has outsourced more jobs and closed more American factories than GE. While they have slashed their American workforce to fewer than 150,000, GE has dramatically expanded its global presence, now employing over 300,000 workers worldwide. Yes, GE has brought a trickle of jobs back to the U.S. over the past two years, but it still outsources more than it insources. And those executives at GE are not clueless--they realize the value of good publicity as it announces new hires at a time like this. But they do not devote nearly the same amount of publicity to their factory closings.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Scott Paul goes on to say:
Immelt's prescription for boosting manufacturing harkens back to the days of bloodletting as a medical procedure -- bad policy with consistently poor results:
* In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club in 2009, Immelt berated "Buy American" policies while acknowledging that GE lived under domestic preference regimes in China, France, and other nations. In Immelt's mind, it is fine for China and France to require to GE to make what it sells in their nations, but it's not OK for America to do the same.
* Immelt essentially rules out any enforcement of our trade laws in his Washington Post op-ed today through a spurious claim that distorts the issue. So China can cheat all it wants, and Immelt wants us to do nothing. Trade enforcement is not "erecting barriers," as Immelt alleges. Rather, trade enforcement is about removing distortions from the free market. Immelt reveals his true stripes with this ridiculous assertion. It's a dangerous statement, and it demands an immediate and forceful rebuke from the White House.
* Immelt supported two of the most disastrous economic policies of the post-World War II era: financial deregulation and China's entry into the World Trade Organization with few, if any, consequences for breaking the rules.
The Board's creation and membership:
The President and Mr. Volcker announced the board's membership on February 6, 2009. Members include:
* Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric chief executive
* James W. Owens, head of Caterpillar
* Robert Wolf, chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas
* Mark Gallogly, founder and managing partner at Centerbridge Partners L.P.
* Penny Pritzker, chair and founder of Pritzker Realty Group and Classic Residence by Hyatt
* John Doerr, partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
* Monica C. Lozano, Director of Bank of America
* Charles E. Phillips, Jr., president of Oracle Corporation.
* Richard L. Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO
* Austan Goolsbee, chairperson of Council of Economic Advisers
* Christina Romer, former chairperson of Council of Economic Advisers
* William H. Donaldson, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman
* Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Member
* Martin Feldstein, former chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan,
* Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Member
* David F. Swensen, CIO at Yale University
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
What a dazzling array of corporate personnages. Trumka seems to be the lone exception. I wonder why there aren't more labor people on this board?
Robert Wolf, chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas, UBS? The United Bank of Switzerland?
One cannot mention UBS without mentioning its cozy relationship with good old Phil Gramm:
Since 2002, Gramm has been an executive with the U.S. operations of UBS, the giant Swiss Bank. An unintentionally hilarious interview with Gramm on the Wall Street Journal editorial page last week asserted that Gramm has "been a key instigator of some of the biggest money-making UBS deals of recent years." The interview was noteworthy not just for first-class butt-kissing, but for deliberately gliding over the avalanche of disasters in the past year that has turned UBS from a respected Swiss titan of discretion and risk management into a laughing stock. As this one-year chart shows, UBS's stock lost nearly 70 percent of its value and now stands at levels not seen since 2002, when Gramm signed up.
http://www.slate.com/...
Everything Gramm touches seems to turn to pure economic rot:
PARIS — Switzerland, a banking redoubt considered until recently to be literally and figuratively above the global financial tumult, succumbed Thursday and announced a bailout plan for its biggest bank, UBS.
Hit harder than any other European financial institution by losses stemming from bad investments in subprime American mortgage debt, UBS will receive a lifeline worth as much as $60 billion from the Swiss National Bank.
The country's other banking powerhouse, Credit Suisse, announced that it was raising $8.75 billion in fresh capital from private backers, with Qatar Investment Authority providing most of it, after turning down the offer of direct government help.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Remember Enron?
I must drag up Enron, because it just seems to me we're being handed a big disgusting bag of corporate gamesmanship that's going to wreck our economy even more, another Enronization, which seems endemic to the 21st century.
Obama has been Enronized! We've all been Enronized!
Check it out in this two-part series, Financial Elites and the Enronization of America:
http://seekingalpha.com/...
http://seekingalpha.com/...
Footnote in the wake of Chairman Hu's state visit to the U.S.:
GE expects double-digit growth in China
By Ed Crooks in New York
Published: January 20 2011 23:10 | Last updated: January 20 2011 23:10
General Electric expects "solid double-digit" sales growth in China this year and "for a long period of time", although revenues there have fallen short of expectations, chief executive Jeff Immelt has said.
Speaking to the Financial Times after meeting President Hu Jintao of China in Washington with other US and Chinese chief executives, Mr Immelt said he was "quite happy" with the progress of GE’s business in China. He reiterated the call he made last year for China to open its markets further, saying: "Our long standing and the amount of commitment we’ve made in China have earned us the right to comment when we don’t agree with something."
http://www.ft.com/...