Silence of the CEOs - NYPOST.com

Silence of the CEOs - NYPOST.com


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from article:

CEOs are a pretty close- mouthed bunch these days; the government just has too many carrots -- and sticks -- to allow them to do much else.

Consider GE's Jeff Immelt. At a meeting this summer, the chief executive let it slip that President Obama's economic policies were bad for business and hurting the economy. Within minutes of the remarks being reported, his own p.r. people were throwing him under the bus -- and Immelt himself was backpedaling.

The comments were actually rather mild and undeniably true -- namely, that businesses spent 2009 and most of 2010 recovering from the financial collapse and then planning to recover from the tax-and-spend policies of Obamanomics by cutting costs, hoarding cash and refusing to hire workers.

Even so, GE corporate flacks were on the phone ASAP. I'd heard the excuse that remarks were taken out of context a million times before -- but it wasn't long before they actually said that their CEO's words "do not represent our views."

Since then, Immelt has been rather cozy with Obama, at least in public. He went along on the president's recent Asia trip without hinting at his earlier criticisms that the president's overregulation of business, or his promise to raise taxes and impose new mandates like health care, contributed to the "tepid" US recovery.

But privately, two people who speak with him regularly say, Immelt is still pretty negative on the president and how his policies have squeezed an already weak economy. The reason: While Obamanomics may be bad for the country, my informants say, Immelt is keenly aware that they've been pretty good for GE -- billions of dollars in projects funded by the president's green-energy, health-care and other initiatives.