I too was stunned by this decision. He picks losers! I think Obama felt obligated to help a "loyal friend" out since he wld hv gotten the boot from Comcast after aquisition of GE. Quid pro quo! Jeff Immelt has been scratching Obama's back since the elections, now it's payback time!
Why aren't all of you on the far-left having a cow in the same manner when we connected Halliburton and the Bush/Cheney administration?!? Hmm?
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Investor's Business Daily
written by Steve Milloy
Friday January 21, 2011 at 6:32pm EST
The choice of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to chair the new President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness must be one of President Obama's most ironic appointments.
The purpose of the council is to advise the president on "finding new ways to promote growth by investing in American business to encourage hiring, to educate and train our workers to compete globally, and to attract the best jobs and businesses to the United States."
Of Immelt, Obama said: "Jeff Immelt's experience at GE and his understanding of the vital role the private sector plays in creating jobs and making America competitive makes him up to the challenge of leading this new council."
The White House further burnished Immelt's credentials by adding in its media release that "Mr. Immelt has been named one of the world's best CEOs three times by Barron's, and since he began serving as chief executive officer, GE has been named America's most admired company in a poll conducted by Fortune magazine and one of the world's most respected companies in polls by Barron's and the Financial Times."
This praise should make us wonder if there is another Jeff Immelt leading another General Electric in some parallel universe.
When the Immelt-we-know took the reins of the GE-we-know from the legendary Jack Welch in the days before the Sept. 11 attacks, GE's stock price was in the $40 range. More than nine years later, GE's stock price is struggling to get back to the $20 level. And during the March 2009 depths of the financial crisis, GE's stock dipped to below $7.
GE was in such bad shape at that time that it required a $139 billion bailout from taxpayers in the form of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. backing of GE Capital debt. GE then cut its dividend 68%, from 32 cents per share to 10 cents per share.
Its dividend has since recovered to 12 cents per share, and shareholders may get a couple of more pennies per share in 2011, but GE's financial performance under Immelt is anything but a success story.
Adding to the irony is the president's notion that Immelt knows about creating jobs and increasing competitiveness.
Immelt actually eliminated 18,000 GE jobs in 2009, despite receiving untold millions in government stimulus and subsidies — like $60 million to build a "technology center" (office building?) in Michigan and $55 million to build a hybrid locomotive battery plant in New York.
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