Lou Dobbs - 2/13/04
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/06/ldt.00.html
toward the bottom of the pageDOBBS: You remember that big and almost instant flap over former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's documents that he used in his book. Well, it turns out that the current treasury secretary now declares those documents given to predecessor Paul O'Neill contained classified information which was really not the fault of Paul O'Neill but rather that the Treasury Department itself. Treasury Department sources tell us the inspector general is placing blame on the Department of the Treasury for the incident, not on Paul O'Neill.
Wall Street closed the week with a strong performance. The Dow up 97 points. The Nasdaq rose 44. The S&P up 14 on the same day the government announced the economy created 112,000 jobs. Christine Romans is here with the story for us.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What better day to announce big job cuts than on a jobs day. Cigna, profit of 31 percent, it's going to cut 3,000 jobs. 9 percent of its workforce. It is slashing its dividend to about 2.5 cent from 33 cents. Paltry jobs growth almost daily news of job cuts from corporate America. On Wall Street, a reality dawning. There are big changes in the U.S. labor market. It's painful for the American worker.
But China watcher Don Strashine (ph), he says quit your belly aching, he says instead of sulking, investors need to accept the realities of global competition, industry leadership, and corporate survival demand outsourcing and job market changes. He says every big employer in America is looking to outsource for lower costs, that's why profits and U.S. profitability of U.S. firms will be strong and jobs growth will not -- you know, earnings have been strong. Profit growth in the fourth quarter up some 28 percent, Lou,
but on these conference calls you do not hear American CEOs say they are going to add jobs, at least not in this country.
DOBBS: Well, Don Strashine (ph), a pretty darn good economist, I think he needs to quit his belly aching because if the only way an American corporation can compete effect in this world is by driving wages down to third-world levels and taking away jobs of Americans, you know they are in big trouble. ROMANS: At some point the investor, the shareholders and the worker are all the same person.
DOBBS: Absolutely. Still, it's about the country. Not the market. Christine Romans, you have a great weekend.
ROMANS: You, too.
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RIK KIRKLAND, "FORTUNE": It's been a rough week for the president. I'm not making a prediction about the election, but certainly he's had two credibility problems. One is the flack about our intelligence in Iraq and whether -- what we knew or didn't know about weapons of mass destruction, and I think his budget is a huge credibility problem, because it's sort of dead on arrival in terms of believability.
ROBERT LENZNER, "FORBES":
Actually, there's an increase in jobs, but 75,000 of them were in the retail trade so there were more jobs but they weren't very good jobs. And they weren't at a rate that you would expect with the economy growing at 4 or 5 percent. DOBBS: Yet the Labor Department, the Labor Secretary Elaine Chao today, Steve, defending the quality of those jobs, and by every account -- I'm talking with, every number I'm looking at says that we are looking at very low level replacement jobs that are coming back into this economy.
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exporting america - list of companies that are exporting jobs -- http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/frameset.exclude.html