The Washington Post and other outlets report this morning that Jeff Immelt, fresh from having tanked his company, General Electric, is now going to spend more time in Washington, advising President Obama on economic policy, as part of a "White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board."
Some of the other names on the economic list are blue chip, such as former SEC chairman Bill Donaldson and former Reagan economic adviser Martin Feldstein. And some are obvious sops to labor--which is, after all, a key Obama constituency--such as United Mine Workers chief Rich Trumka. That's politics.
But what is Immelt doing on this list of economic recovery advisers? What sort of economic recovery credential is it to have presided over the 75% decline in GE stock price? If Immelt was really capable of economic recovery, he would staying in his HQ in Fairfield to make it happen.
Oh wait! GE might be a dog of a company--more precisely, a company that's been poisoned by greedy overspeculation in bad loans--but Immelt's firm has one big asset--a huge pile of IOUs that it piled up last year, when Keith Olbermann & Co. ripped into Obama's rivals, first Hillary Clinton, and then John McCain. So the Obamans owe MSNBC, and the rest of the company connected to it. And now, it looks like, Immelt is coming to Washington to receive payback from a grateful nation--or at least from a grateful Democratic party.
Yes, there has been a partial payback already, in the $139 billion loan guarantee that the feds gave to GE subsidiary GE Capital last year, but obviously GE needs more.
And Obama needs more. As he stumbles around on his stimulus package, to say nothing of his troubled appointments, the 44th President is realizing that this really is the big leagues. By now he is figuring that he is going to need all the help he can get, that the Republicans will not be pushovers. And that realization means further snuggling up to Immelt, who can in turn guarantee that MSNBC's coverage--and maybe CNBC's and NBC's--is nothing but positive and adoring. (Although one might think that it would be hard to get more positive and adoring than Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, as they are now, anything is possible.)
It's a great plan for Immelt, a great plan for Obama. But it's terrible for GE shareholders, and not so good for America.
