GE CEO: "We are all Democrats Now"

Economic Policy Journal ^ | 11/16/09 | Robert Wenzel

[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.

[MrB]

This is exactly the goal of the left -

make everyone so dependent on the gov’t for their livelihood that no one would dare put the left out of power.

[Ann Archy]

Hey Jeffy....NO WE ARE NOT!!

[FromLori]

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
– Ayn Rand1

[Landru]

"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."

Now that's a shocker. LOL

"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.'..."

And we wring our hands wondering HTH we wound-up with a McLame, eh?
Good grief. LOL

[andy58-in-nh]

[TLI]

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."...

Too bad GE, it was nice knowing ya.

[FromLori]

Except in Immelt’s casee he supported BO for a reason $$$$ just like goldman sachs, jp morgan, etc $$$ and that $$$ is coming from your wallet in the end! And those banks supporting Acorn all the while whining they were forced yes well had they not offered those loans in the first place they could not have been forced and it didn’t seem to bother them to fund ACORN and the black panthers because in the end we PAID!

http://nlpc.org/stories/2009/09/27/taxpayer-owned-citigroup-still-bankrolling-acorn

http://nlpc.org/stories/2009/09/15/jpmorgan-chase-asked-stop-funding-acorn

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000085

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/07/jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-donat.html

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/president-obamas-favorite-banker.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-changes-its-status-to-financial-holding-company-2009-8

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/04/summers/

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/backdoor-bailouts-for-goldman-sachs/

http://www.propublica.org/ion/stimulus/item/stimulus-transparency-watchdogs-keep-contract-details-a-secret-813

az=view_all&address=132x4725893
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/21/baracks-wall-street-problem-is-now-americas/

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/will_dems_allow_goldman_to_man.html

http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/07/02/will-cap-
and-trade-be-the-next-bubble/

[Blue Collar Christian]

“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!”

When a bank robber was asked why he kept robbing banks, he answered “because that’s where the money is.”

[SMM48]

I have been boycotting anything GE for over 5 years.

[ichabod1]

The US goverment has the notion that IT is too big to fail. We’re going to find out if that’s true or not.

[SnuffaBolshevik]

"General Electric owes its creditors about half a trillion dollars, and has net assets of less than 20 billion dollars. GE spends 90% of its income just servicing its debts."

Hah!

I remember about 12 years ago, the pump and dump pimps were touting GE as "a massive cash generation machine" that was a no-brainer buy.
Thankfully, I got out a while back at $37.

[paulycy]

First we were all socialists.

Now we’re all democrats.

Pretty soon they’ll get closer by saying we’re all pubbies.

When in reality most of the US is conservative.

[FromLori]

Perfect example of a fake capitalist! Have you ever watched that old film Capitalist conspiracy?

Way better then any of that crap Alex Jones spews...

http://bluelori.blogspot.com/2009/10/capitalist-conspiracy-inside-view-of.html

http://www.nationalcenter.org/PR-Media_Conflict_of_Interest_062409.html

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Group-calls-on-Obama-to-remove-GEs-Immelt-after-firm-agrees-to-50-million-SEC-fraud-fine-52536572.html

http://obambi.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/ge-ceo-jeff-immelt-should-be-in-jail/

http://boycottgemsnbc.weebly.com/
GE To Make BILLIONS From Obama Cap and Trade Scheme

http://thecommonconservative.com/?tag=jeffery-immelt

[mo]

Looters....pure and simple...

[FromLori]

Yes the hard way.

[agere_contra]

Thankfully, I got out a while back at $37.

That was very wise FRiend. GE has a share capitalization north of 150 billion, but in a universe untainted by massive Government intervention the shares would be worth precisely nothing.

[Vendome]

G.E. We fake all things and Lie.

G.E. We make all things a Lie

G.E. We Hope our Pockets are Lined

G.E. We take the strings and Lie

[Fred Hayek]

James Taggart?

[ichabod1]

And what should a man do? Seek some Grandee, take him for a patron, and like the obscure creeper clasping a tree trunk and licking the bark of that which props it up, attain to height by craft instead of strength? No, I thank you. Dedicate, as they all do, poems to financiers? Wear motley in the humble hope of seeing the lips of a minister distend for once in a smile not ominous of ill? No, I thank you. Eat every day a toad? Be threadbare at the belly with groveling? Have his skin dirty soonest at the knees? Perform feats of dorsal elasticity? NO, I THANK YOU! With one hand stroke the goat while with the other one water the cabbage? Make gifts of senna that counter-gifts of rhubarb may accrue, and indefatigibly swing his censer in some beard? No, I thank you. Push himself from lap to lap, become a little great man in a great little circle, propel his ship[ with madrigals for oars and in his sails the sighs of elderly ladies? No, I thank you. Get the good editor Sercy to print his verses at proper expense? No, I thank you. Contrive to be nominated pope in conclaves held by imbeciles in wineshops? No, I thank you. Work to construct a name based on a sonnet instead of constructing other sonnets? No, I thank you. Discover talent in tyros, and in them alone? No, I thank you. Stand in terror of what gazettes may say and say to himself, “at whatever cost may I figure in the Paris Mercury?” No, I thank you. Calculate, cringe, peak, prefer making a call to a poem — petition, solicit, apply? No, I thank you. No, I thank you. No, I thank you.

[clintonh8r]

I’ll be LMAO when the pay czar determines Immelt’s compensation and Baraq is GE’s chairman....