Obama Replaces Volcker with GE CEO Immelt - to help burnish pro-business credentials

[somone]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-21/obama-taps-ge-s-immelt-for-economy-panel-replace-volcker.html

Obama Taps GE's Immelt for Economy Panel, Replace Volcker
By Julianna Goldman and Rachel Layne

President Barack Obama will name Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, to head his outside panel of economic advisers, replacing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Immelt wrote in an op-ed today in the Washington Post that Obama asked him to helm the newly renamed President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The group will reach out to labor and business leaders to serve “as a catalyst for action,” he wrote.

Immelt, 54, is an original member of the panel, which was formed as the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board in February 2009. GE’s CEO since 2001, he heads the world’s biggest maker of jet engines, medical-imaging equipment and power-plant turbines and gives the White House a corporate heavyweight to help burnish Obama’s pro-business credentials.

He has sounded many of the administration’s themes: boosting jobs through U.S. exports, ensuring companies can compete with powers like China and India, and jumpstarting a clean-energy economy. Immelt wrote today that he and Obama “are committed” to making the U.S. “the most competitive and innovating economy in the world.”

“It’s the right aspiration,” Immelt who will still serve as an outside adviser in his new role, said of the president’s goal of doubling American exports to more than $2 trillion in five years, during a Nov. 6 interview in Mumbai, where he joined Obama for a meeting with business leaders. “We’ve done it in the last five years, as a company.” ....

http://www4.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/Obama+Attends+Meeting+Economic+Recovery+Advisory+RW5ifrRW3S8l.jpg

[SharonAnn]

1. OMG. The company who started and accelerated the off-shoring trend.

His predecessor, Jack Welch, said that factories should be placed on barges so that they could be moved to wherever in the world the labor was cheapest.

Neutron Jack. The people were all gone but the factory buildings were still standing.

GE continues it's rapacious government contract work, off-shoring of labor, etc.

[pa28]

2. I'm sensing a theme here.

If you have the stomach to watch Kudlow he's seeing it too and he's really excited about the idea that Obama has "gone supply side".

It's jaw dropping to watch reaganite fundamentalists like Larry nearly soil their very expensive pants with excitement and gratitude over the President's neo-liberal conversion.

[msongs]

3. evidently no republicans were available lol nt