Saturday, January 29, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
A CEO as an economic advisor? Conflict of interest?
I have inadvertently been on blog hiatus lately. Graduate school applications, school work, and some travel have all gotten in the way of what was meant to be a relaxing winter break of reading and blogging. Oh well. This semester should bring some fun content since I'm taking an economic history course on European capitalist development, econometrics, and a course on cooperatives. Back to blogging...
Last week, President Obama appointed General Electric chief executive Jeffrey R. Immelt to run his outside panel of economic advisors. Immelt will be taking Paul Volcker's place as Chairman. The main focus now of the panel is said to be on job creation, also an area expected to be addressed in the upcoming State of the Union Address. Something just seems like some kind of ironic conflict of interest, no?
It turns out, that while Immelt plans to focus on getting the nation on the path towards job creation, his company, General Electric, is actually one of the worst offenders when it comes to job destruction (job killing in Republican nomenclature). GE is a leader in sending manufacturing jobs overseas (as nearly 53% of all GE jobs are), causing many labor leaders like the director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing to label Immelt as "an outsourcing CEO".
Since Immelt has been at the top of the company, about 29 factories in the U.S. have closed and thousands of jobs have been exported overseas. The issue was briefly covered by ABC News in their evening broadcast here. The newscast discloses that from 2007-2009, General Electric has had more than 20,000 layoffs of American workers. Not to mention the company has also committed countless environmental misdeed, outlined here on a site advocating for cleaning up GE's damage.
In fact, GE has a history of devastating local economies. Some decades ago, Pittsfield Massachusetts was home to the vast GE Plastics Division. The campus sprawled many acres in the city, until thousands of layoffs occurred in the late 1980s and early 90s (some old news articles are chronicled here). The city was then burdened with an industrial wasteland on the North side of town, and an environmental catastrophe in the Housatonic river, which has only recently been settled. Ironically, TreeHugger seems pretty happy that such "an advocate for clean energy" [profits] will be joining the team, but they may want to do their homework. Pittsfield is just one example, and judging by the number of factory closings, there are likely dozens of other similar stories.
While Immelt claims to have jobs for Americans as his number one priority, his position as such a prominent business leader suggests he may have more interest in navigating policy aimed at padding the pockets of big business executives, rather than creating stable and sustainable working-class jobs.
As economists debate a code of ethics for disclosing conflicts of interest, such as ties to business while being an economic advisor, it looks like to Obama economic advisory panel has avoided that problem all together- forget the economists, just directly hire big business! Ivory towers may have moved to Wall Street, but Wall Street has apparently relocated to the White House.
Sighhh.
Last week, President Obama appointed General Electric chief executive Jeffrey R. Immelt to run his outside panel of economic advisors. Immelt will be taking Paul Volcker's place as Chairman. The main focus now of the panel is said to be on job creation, also an area expected to be addressed in the upcoming State of the Union Address. Something just seems like some kind of ironic conflict of interest, no?
It turns out, that while Immelt plans to focus on getting the nation on the path towards job creation, his company, General Electric, is actually one of the worst offenders when it comes to job destruction (job killing in Republican nomenclature). GE is a leader in sending manufacturing jobs overseas (as nearly 53% of all GE jobs are), causing many labor leaders like the director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing to label Immelt as "an outsourcing CEO".
Since Immelt has been at the top of the company, about 29 factories in the U.S. have closed and thousands of jobs have been exported overseas. The issue was briefly covered by ABC News in their evening broadcast here. The newscast discloses that from 2007-2009, General Electric has had more than 20,000 layoffs of American workers. Not to mention the company has also committed countless environmental misdeed, outlined here on a site advocating for cleaning up GE's damage.
In fact, GE has a history of devastating local economies. Some decades ago, Pittsfield Massachusetts was home to the vast GE Plastics Division. The campus sprawled many acres in the city, until thousands of layoffs occurred in the late 1980s and early 90s (some old news articles are chronicled here). The city was then burdened with an industrial wasteland on the North side of town, and an environmental catastrophe in the Housatonic river, which has only recently been settled. Ironically, TreeHugger seems pretty happy that such "an advocate for clean energy" [profits] will be joining the team, but they may want to do their homework. Pittsfield is just one example, and judging by the number of factory closings, there are likely dozens of other similar stories.
While Immelt claims to have jobs for Americans as his number one priority, his position as such a prominent business leader suggests he may have more interest in navigating policy aimed at padding the pockets of big business executives, rather than creating stable and sustainable working-class jobs.
As economists debate a code of ethics for disclosing conflicts of interest, such as ties to business while being an economic advisor, it looks like to Obama economic advisory panel has avoided that problem all together- forget the economists, just directly hire big business! Ivory towers may have moved to Wall Street, but Wall Street has apparently relocated to the White House.
Sighhh.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
First grad school acceptance
Wooo! This morning I heard back from Maastricht University and was accepted to their Masters in International Economic Studies. I have also finished all but two of my other applications...and am officially broke (application fees add up).
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