As I've long maintained, the business press is often the best place to get the real story about what's going on in American politics. That's because it's focused almost exclusively on telling its investor-readers how to make money, rather than on the political media's manufactured red-versus-blue story lines -- story lines that distract us from our transpartisan oligarchy. A particularly good example of the value of the business press in telling the real political story comes from the latest issue of Businessweek.
After a week of the political press corps in Washington telling us how "pro-business" President Obama is for appointing General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to a top White House position, Businessweek lets us know what those in the know think this is really all about: Profits, corporate control and insider information. Check out this excerpt:
To some investors, [Immelt] taking the role is practically a fiduciary duty. Stephen Hoedt, a Cleveland-based analyst for Key Private Bank, whose parent company owns 17 million GE shares, says Immelt may be "able to affect policy at the highest level." Brian James, co-head of research at fund manager Loomis Sayles, says he hopes Immelt, a Republican, gets "some insights into what's going to impact GE coming out from Washington," adding "this appointment simply can't be bad for GE."...Given the uncertainty in GE's home market, not to mention opportunities to participate in earmarked projects and policy debates, Sterne Agee analyst Nick Heymann argues, Washington is a good place for Immelt to be. "This is where the opportunities to influence are," he says.
So there it is. Unlike our political elite who try to portray everything as a grand story of good and evil, of statesmen and Great Men, the people with Big Money on the line are open about what this appointment really is: Namely, the institutionalization of corporate influence -- the kind that likely means bigger profits for job outsourcing firms like General Electric. As they say, Immelt's new job will likely provide a current CEO with power to shape the policy that governs his company, as well as exclusive advanced (read: insider) knowledge of those policies.
This is exactly why I've said on my radio show that for Obama the Immelt appointment isn't about creating jobs. How could it be, considering GE has been one of the biggest outsourcers in America? No, for Obama this is about cold hard cash -- and campaign contributions in specific. In putting a sitting CEO* inside the economic apparatus of the government, he is broadcasting to corporate America that they now have a direct conduit to policymaking -- with the unstated by strongly implied suggestion that the conduit is open to those with the resources to pay up in 2012.
In that sense, I guess Obama has achieved a modicum of the transparency he promised: He has fully formalized the pay-to-play corruption that was once hidden from view, but is now right out in the open.
*It's one thing for a White House to hire someone who leaves his/her job as an executive to work full-time in the government. That's bad enough (think: Dick Cheney). But it's quite another thing to take a sitting CEO and make him/her simultaneously a top White House economic policymaker. The dual roles -- CEO and government policymaker -- define the phrase "conflict of interest."
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It will take a global business leader, like Immelt, to take on such a challenge, listening and responding to ALL its stakeholders and building a grand business model.
But I'm not so certain you are right when you say "As I've long maintained, the business press is often the best place to get the real story about what's going on in American politics." I see the mainstream business press as apologists and propagandists for the big corporations and the very rich. Their jobs seem to be to reassure medium-to-small investors and people watching their pensions that if they just make the right decisions, their ticket to the other side of the Rainbow will be punched. And that ticket to joy was not punched, then it was all their fault because some, somewhere did pretty well.
Also, just for the record, they push for lower wages. They seem to always have CNBC on in the locker room at my gym, and I swear that EVERY one of their "experts" says that the key to a recovery is lowering wages.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/24-2
Firms See Long-Sought Goal in Sight: Major Pay Cuts | CommonDreams.org
"...These firms are systematically implementing a major strategy to permanently drive down wages far below anything considered "middle class." The key tool for corporations: forcing acceptance of permanent two-tier wage structures and the insertion of nonunion casual workers into union plants to drive down union pay to levels unimaginable a couple years back. Big business is essentially trying to take back the hard-won gains of working people won over generations.
[snip]
Expect the downward wage spiral to continue under relentless pressure from corporations who see an endless surplus army of labor with 9.6% unemployment and benefits running out for two million in December.
For example, "Toyota 's goal has become $12.64 an hour, the median wage for comparable manufacturing in Kentucky, where it has its largest plant, or $10.79 in Alabama, where it is building a new plant," reports UC-Berkeley Prof. Harley Shaiken, a long-time scholar on labor issues and the auto industry..."
Iron Law of Wages:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/iron+law+of+wages
Iron law of wages | Define Iron law of wages at
Dictionary.com
"the doctrine or theory that wages tend toward a level sufficient only to maintain a subsistence standard of living. "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/28/health-care-tax-break-deficit_n_788852.html
Job-Based Health Care Threatened
"...Repealing the tax break would raise several hundred billion dollars a year, depending on how it's done. Many economists believe employers would boost pay if they didn't provide health care..."
Anybody who thinks employers would boost pay to compensate is delusional.
Starvation tends to focus the mind.
The richest 2% have accumulated more wealth & political power AND invested more trillions overseas during this economic mess than at any time in our history. There is no conceivable way that these 2%ers will allow Obama or the Congress to interfere with the recession OR create a resurgence in jobs here at home, to compete with their investments overseas. No effing way!
Until we bust up the accumulation of wealth and power by the few, our children have no future.
Our government's chief interest is big business and its well-being. Appointing CEOs (and bankers) to government's positions is part and parcel of this ethos.