Jeff "the jobs butcher" Immelt to chair Council on Jobs

Announcing a New Council on Jobs

and Competitiveness

(GE's U.S. headcount down 31,000 under

Jeff "the butcher" Immelt)

Posted by Kori Schulman on January 21, 2011
The White House Blog

This afternoon, in Schenectady, New York, President Obama will announce the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness – a board to get Americans back to work and strengthen our economy that will be chaired by Jeff Immelt, the CEO and Chairman of General Electric.

For the past two years under the leadership of Paul Volcker, the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB), has provided outside advice and counsel as the administration has taken bold steps to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. On February 6, 2011, the PERAB two-year mandate will expire, as scheduled.

As we enter a new phase in our economic recovery, the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness will have a new composition and new mission. The Council will focus 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.

Here’s what President Obama said about the new Council:

Over the past two years, my Economic Recovery Advisory Board has provided this administration with support and expertise as we worked to bring our economy back from the brink and start recovering from an economic crisis that cost millions of American jobs. We still have a long way to go, and my number one priority is to ensure we are doing everything we can to get the American people back to work. As we enter a new phase in our recovery, I have asked the new Council to focus its work on finding new ways to encourage the private sector to hire and invest in American competitiveness.

Adding that Jeff Immelt is the right person for the job

and thanking Paul Vockler for his service:

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. I also want to thank my friend Paul Volcker, whose service not just during this difficult period but for decades has been invaluable to me and the American people. I will continue to call on him for his counsel and he will always be a member of my team.


Let's check in and see what others have to say about Jeff Immelt's job creating qualilfications:

Machinists question Immelt jobs agenda (1/21/2011):

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In the past five months, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt eliminated scores of U.S. jobs when he closed GE plants in Virginia, Massachusetts and Ohio. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) is asking if this is the record that inspired President Obama to name Immelt to be chairman of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

.“We are rewarding the guy who is turning off America’s lights, literally,” said IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger. “Two of the plants on Immelt’s hit list made incandescent light bulbs. Replacement bulbs will be made in – you guessed it – China.”

Zero Hedge calling it like it really is:

Congratulations to Jeff Immelt - the uberhead of the soon to be former head propaganda financial station has been appointed to chair the White House's job panel. That said, we wonder just whose leg he had to hump to get that particular job: after all any small business job CEO in America is infinitely more qualified than Immelt to create jobs (unless the jobs in question are 1,000 prop trading positions at Goldman Sachs - since we are rubbing it in in Volcker's face why not go all the way). Dow Jones (Link) has created a brief compilation of Immelt's simply tragic job creation track record:

[Immelt] 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%.

Does anyone really believe President Obama and Jeff Immelt did not have a discussion about GE's earnings before today's Kumbaya? Would have been devastating PR had GE missed!