Jeff Immelt, a titan of US industry. He has eliminated 31,000 US jobs since taking over GE, destroyed their balance sheet by turning the company into a giant hedge fund, crushed their stock price and shipped thousands of jobs to China. As a reward, he gets a White House job sucking Obama’s cock. Well done Jeff. By the way, the earnings they reported today were a fraud. The GE Capital balance sheet is filled with billions of bad debt. If the FASB hadn’t rolled over like a dog and these piece of shit companies like GE, Bank of America and Citigroup had to value their assets for what they are really worth, every one of them would be bankrupt. That is a fact.
He Certainly Knows How to Cut Jobs…
Interesting to hear GE CEO Jeff Immelt will chair a new White House jobs panel tasked with finding ways to grow private-sector jobs. He runs a big company, but Immelt has shown more skill at cutting jobs, frankly, than creating.
GE finished 2009 with 18,000 fewer US workers than it had at the end of 2008, and US headcount is down 31,000 since Immelt’s first full year in 2002. During his tenure, GE workers based in the US as a percentage of total employees has fallen to 44% from 52%.
Maybe the company’s 2010 10-K due in February will show GE actually added jobs last year. But then again, maybe that’s just our imagination at work.
Addendum:
Here’s a dead-on take (as usual) from market strategist Joan McCullough at East Shore Partners, on this Immelt appointment:
Why do we give a flyin’ fig about this announcement from the White House? Because it hits home once again that nothing has changed. That the crony capitalism is as alive and well at the hands of a community organizer as it was with the rest before him. That the best interests of the US taxpayer are the last consideration of our rainmakers.
Photo courtesy of GE
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
You do remember that GE paid NO TAXES to the US in 2009.
This on top of getting all kinds of “greenie” subsidies for all those unicorn-farting-lollipops green energy crap projects.
And the reward for fucking over the US and its taxpayers?
A cushy fed.gov make work job on a POS committee to try to fix the damange he did in the first place!!!
Aww, I just love the smell of complete and utter corruption in the morning.
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21st January 2011 at 6:29 pm
Goldorack says:
he’s a SOB
helas, he looks like all his buddies he meet at the local posh golf club (10,000$/year membership)
that’s the way the world is today
as long as this kind of scumbag will continue feeling safe, we’ll be doomed.
fear is for workers
when fear will be for leaders, then changes will come.
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21st January 2011 at 6:36 pm
Opinionated Bloviator says:
It also re-enforces the fact that NO-ONE has learn’t anything, as such a repeat of the 2008 crisis is inevitable. The big difference this time is the United States MAY not have the money available to bail out the perpetually insolvent TBTF’s. We may be in for an “Iceland” moment.
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21st January 2011 at 7:14 pm
MuckAbout says:
How dare you call Jeff Immelt nasty names. After all, he was on CBS news tonight shaking hands with Obamama celebrating the closing of a high tech (and skilled worker filled) jet engine turbine plant (which will go overseas) yet being a real sweet guy and converting the plant to manufacture of low tech lead acid batteries (a somewhat less advanced endeavor). This will allow those engineers in China to absorb GE’s leading technology in jet engine turbines and within a few years, China will be making them in Guangdong.
Now, instead of PhD Mechanical engineers working at the plant, they can go pound sand after they train their Chinese successors and we can welcome J6P to handle the lead sulfite for batteries with 1/20th the number of Engineers required to figure out how to bolt them together. We can also welcome a minimum of f-i-f-t-y (50) times the amount of pollution and hazardous material that will be passed through the plant to manufacture said batteries. Also the batteries will be low tech and advance the USA’s capability in energy storage by a big fat zero
Don’t forget that low tech lead acid batteries are made of lead and sulfuric acid and plastics none of which is kind to the environment or those who have to work with it.
GE Capital gets $139 Billion worth of loan guarantees (that is, loans guaranteed to be absorbed by the Fed or one of its puppet banks so the taxpayer is on the hook for them) and a hand shake from Obamama for trashing 31,000 high quality jobs and sucking up the loan guarantees for all his trouble.
Don’t forget, like in the Godfather, “This is just business – nothing personal.” unless you are one of the 31,000 laid off medium to high skilled workers who used to work for GE or the United States in general.
My solution: Sorry folks, Globalization and free trade has and is destroying the USA. We need to pull back a little (not all the way) and not impoverish ourselves on the alter of every working human being having the same wages and benefits. Little at a time, sure. Just not with such a rush that we implode the US economy to the extent we are heading.
Given the way things are going, we will be making less money per capita than those in developing countries, cooking dinner over what sticks we can gather and subsisting on rice and beans if we can afford them.
I know – an exaggeration – but in the long term that’s how it looks. Especially with the loss of the traditional family and failure of our educational model.
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21st January 2011 at 7:22 pm
Kill Bill says:
The merging of state and business leadership is fascism and both main parties are involved.
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21st January 2011 at 7:34 pm
Kill Bill says:
Would someone shoot that animal nesting on this guys head, FFS.
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21st January 2011 at 8:08 pm
DavosSherman says:
Obama knows how to pick some real classy people with quite the job record.
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21st January 2011 at 9:11 pm
DavosSherman says:
By the way I cut and pasted your intro and sent it to the WH asking them WTF they are doing.
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21st January 2011 at 9:11 pm
Smokey says:
Agreed Davos,
That intro is primo.
In my opinion, it may be the best intro ever on TBP.
A fucking Instant Classic.
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21st January 2011 at 10:17 pm
DavosSherman says:
Smokey I agree, Jim can sum stuff up in 2 sentences and what I like best is he is brutally blunt not this CNBS politically “correct” (some oxymoron in that 2 word combo).
MuckAbout: Totally agree on globalization, what an effing unmitigated disaster that was!
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21st January 2011 at 10:29 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“Given the way things are going, we will be making less money per capita than those in developing countries, cooking dinner over what sticks we can gather and subsisting on rice and beans if we can afford them. “-MA
At least we still have some clean water to boil the rice and beans and trees to make a fire from. By the time GE gets through with China, they’ll be trying to grow rice in Conc H2SO4 rice paddies.
“I know – an exaggeration – but in the long term that’s how it looks. Especially with the loss of the traditional family and failure of our educational model.”
Nonsense. Long term the Tribal model will return, composed of between 100-2000 or so family units, and Astronomers will earn their Ph.D.’s the old fashioned way, laying out under the night sky and pondering on the cosmos above. Worked for Tycho, worked for Copernicus, worked for Galileo.
A little Positive thinking here will perk your attitude right up MA.
RE
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21st January 2011 at 11:51 pm
bigargon says:
Muck you are dead on: Free trade has killed us . Throughout most of American history, we used what was called the “American System” which was import tariff with no corporate taxes. This country thrived under that system. Now we have the reverse high corporate taxes and no tariffs. I think we need to go back to a modernized version of the old “American System”. Unfortunately Chicom has the US by the short hairs with all our debt they bought. We should have hit the Chicom with tariffs at least 20 years ago. the “Experts” fear if we do anything it will start a trade war but China has been conducting a trade war against us for 20 years.
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21st January 2011 at 6:11 am
Apollo says:
Free trade, globalization, dollar leveraging, outsource, etc. You gotta be careful when you blame these for all of American middle-class ills.
Quick – who are the world’s top 2 and highest tech jet engine maker? GE and, Rolls Royce. Do you see RR sign the kinds of technology transfer and manufacturing deal with China? No. Hell, they even don’t do it in the EU, or US. RR tech jobs stay in the UK and that’s that.
Quick – which western country is the biggest and highest tech net exporter (we know Japan is for the east). Germany. Do you know Germany makes far far more than Mercedes and Porsche? (How about the best tanks in the world? How about the best sound card in the world, which is installed in my audiophile PC.) Do you see all the famous German tech companies selling out like no tomorrow, to satisfy Wall Street expectations? No. See, they don’t have Wall Street. And their culture does not permit it.
So its not the concept of free trade, and all those ‘terms’. It’s the individual companies. It’s the culture of the executives. And now, we have the epitome of American big biz globalized ‘make my quarter’ CEO in the White House. He will develop strategies to create jobs. Hey, McDonalds still need a whole lot of burger flippers. That’s jobs. Ha ha ha !!!
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21st January 2011 at 3:52 pm
Opinionated Bloviator says:
Apollo, And those are the only type of jobs that Jeff will bring to the table. High paying middle class jobs NO – Too expensive and they cut into my bonus, outsource to China, India, Elbonia…
Under Wall Street thinking paying “the small people” employees well (as opposed to C level executives) is blasphemy.
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21st January 2011 at 7:02 pm
Goldorack says:
Globalization is shit
making Germany an example is a mistake.
they mostly rely on their exported goods, so if the world turn to crap, they will turn to crap equally
the only reason why Germany still hold well today is because many countries are changing their dollars for means of production. countries prepare for what next, and it’s better to have some tools than worthless paper. but once TSHTF, Germany will become a shithole in the pure tradition of its former communist counterpart.
the mindset of the “ossies” is still very vivid
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21st January 2011 at 6:01 am
James Jones says:
Hum… I’m not so sure about these numbers. I’ve been with GE for 5 years and I don’t know anyone that has been canned. To top that off we just opened a new center in Michigan that has adding something like 1500 jobs. I think maybe some facts to back this claim would be helpful…
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21st January 2011 at 5:26 pm