Posted on 11/16/2009 6:51:47 AM PST by FromLori
Thanks to some great reporting at WSJ by Elizabeth Williamson and Paul Glader, now we know why General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has been to the White House five times since President Obama has occupied the place. He wants GE to out do Goldman Sachs and Carlyle Group combined as the biggest pig at the trough of corporate handouts. David Rubenstein looks like an amateur compared to Immelt. From WSJ's report: The financial crisis hasn't been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses.
But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam's stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation's corner offices: "We're all Democrats now."...
The government has taken on a giant role in the U.S. economy over the past year, penetrating further into the private sector than anytime since the 1930s. Some companies are treating the government's growing reach -- and ample purse -- as a giant opportunity, and are tailoring their strategies accordingly. For GE, once a symbol of boom-time capitalism, the changed landscape has left it trawling for government dollars on four continents.
"The government has moved in next door, and it ain't leaving," Mr. Immelt said at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal in June. "You could fight it if you want, but society wants change. And government is not going away."
GE has high hopes for the strategy. It says that over the next three years or so it could bring in as much as $192 billion from projects funded by governments around the globe, such as electric-grid modernization, renewable-energy generation and health-care technology upgrades...
Reporters who called the Obama administration for information on renewable-energy provisions in the legislation were directed to GE...
When the stimulus package was rolled out, Mr. Immelt instructed executives leading the company's major business units "to put together swat teams to get stimulus money, and [identify] who to fire if they don't get the money," says a person who heard him issue the instructions.
In February, a few days after President Obama signed the stimulus plan, GE lawyers, lobbyists and executives crowded into a conference room at GE's Washington office to figure out how to parlay billions of dollars in spending provisions into GE contracts... You have to wonder what Immelt promised Obama and Rham Emmanuel in return. Buying off those boys doesn't come cheap.
Jeffery Immelt should go plug in a wet lightbulb.
Break up GE.
Does GE make lampposts?
Immelt was an incompetent from the day he took over G.E. Without crooked inside dealing, he would already have been pushed out of power by the G.E. board members.
We [elite republicans] are all democrats now.
Mr. Immelt, we already figured that out on our own.
So Immelt’s philosophy is to throw up your hands and give up.
Some leader.
GE has no hope and no future except as a tit-sucking parasite. Of course the CEO is directing his people to grab all the stimulus tax money they can.
He’s not throwing up his hands and giving up he is opening up his hands and sucking up our tax dollars another pretend capitalist sucking on the publics teat!
GE should be allowed to fail just like the banks who sucked up our tax dollars. lol I used a similar metaphor in another response as yours.
he is also one sick and corrupt progressive....
GE bought up all the ENRON assets during the “ENRON fire sale.” they took a gamble on “new energy” and they are pissed that we are not biting......
Good Lord!
What have we become.
Big business bows their knees to Hussein.
GE amd GS are pigs of a different breed, but pigs nonetheless. Both are big into the Al Gore, environmental capitalism game. GS wants to control the market for carbon credits (selling free air for $ is even better than the tulip bulb scam of the 1600’s), and GE wants to sell energy efficient light bulbs, windmills, etc to the consumer via gov’t enforced mandates.
‘Green Week’ on the NBC affiliates is nothing more than corporate brainwashing of the masses in the name of making GE more money. The fact so many people do not see through this crap is amazing.
Environmentalism today is a toxic combination of enivro-wacko, anti-capialists like the WWF, Greenpeace, and Sierra Clubs, combined with the Wall St fraudsters like UBS, GS, JPM, combined with the Democratic Party. Each stands to benefit in their own way, to the detriment of the freedom, liberty and economic well being of the average citizen.
Ah yes, truly a President of all the people..oops I mean Democrats only. You tea baggers can just pay your taxes and go (deleted).
GM cars will be sold to losers who can’t pay the note.
Explains why MSNBC is still on.
Frankly, I’m insulted.
Every time Jeff Immelt speaks I think he sounds like a character in “Atlas Shrugged”.
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