Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, has launched a rare broadside against the Chinese government, which he accused of being increasingly hostile to foreign multinationals.
He warned that the world’s largest manufacturing company was contemplating better prospects elsewhere in resource-rich countries and that those nations did not want to be “colonised” by Chinese investors.
“I really worry about China,” Mr. Immelt told an audience of dozens of top Italian executives, referring to the Chinese government, which he accused of becoming increasingly protectionist. “I am not sure that in the end they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful.”
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Jeffrey Immelt head of GE said “we have to become an industrial powerhouse again but you don’t do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in synch.”
Well there’s the rub Jeffie boy. You supported Obamarx and now you’re upset that he’s …well Obamarx.
Ditto Goldman Sachs the biggest corporate donator to Obama is being sued by Obama. Ditto Warren Buffett who owns a lot of insurance companies that Obama calls the root of all evil in Health Care.
You boys are supposed to be big believers in due diligence when you buy a company, why don’t you apply those principles when you buy a lemon like Obama?
What does all this mean? It doesn’t mean all business and all politicians are bad people. It simply reinforces that the lesser of evils (Churchill called democracy the worst system except for all the rest) is democratic capitalism. Therefore in order to reduce the kind of blatant cronyism going on in the USA lately a couple of things need to happen.
- The job of politicians should be to ensure that there is lots of competition for large items such as those produced by GE, so that Immelt doesn’t get favoured just because he sucked up to Obama.
- Corporate and Union donations need to be revisited along with lobbying laws. Canada might have a better solution although not all agree that outright banning donation is a good idea, it needs debate.
- When Immelt says “government and entrepreneurs are out of synch” what does that mean? We don’t want them in bed together. We also don’t want a POTUS that hates capitalism. But isn’t the way to handle that at the polls next November and at Tea Parties between now and then? Jeffie go to a Tea Party instead of shooting your mouth off in Rome , instead why don’t you say this at home “Business did not like the U.S. president, and the president did not like business, he said, making a point of praising Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, for her defence of German industry.”
I tend to agree with Immelt and thank him for telling it as he sees it.
It starts a discussion and that is always a good thing.