Stop whining, start hiring

Daniel Gross finds laughable the fine whine we're hearing from business leaders over the Obama administration's modest attempts at reform.

After an eight-year slumber, the Environmental Protection Agency is again issuing regulations. Two years after an appalling financial debacle, Congress has finally moved to regulate Wall Street. But to hear our nation's corporate chieftains tell it, it's enough to plunge us back into recession. "We have to become an industrial powerhouse again, but you don't do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in sync," lamented GE CEO Jeff Immelt in a recent speech. On July 12, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Federation of Independent Business held a "Jobs for America" summit. While President Obama met with CEOs at the White House, the summiteers called for—wait for it!—cutting taxes for companies, extending tax cuts for the wealthy, and opening up federal areas for resource exploration.

The notion of these guys holding a jobs summit is a little like BP holding a deepwater-drilling safety summit. Between 2001 and 2009, corporate America designed the playing field to its specifications—easy money from the Federal Reserve; lower taxes on capital gains, dividends, and income; an administration that let industry essentially write its own regulations. But the players proceeded to put up goose eggs. In January 2001, there were 111.6 million private-sector payroll jobs in the United States. In January 2009, when Bush left office, there were 110.9 million. The stock market is basically where it was a decade ago. The lost decade ended with the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

It's the tax payers that should be pissed -- at these CEOs. Truth of the matter is, in addition to their expertise at taking the boardroom equivalent of soccer's "flopping," they're very good at cutting jobs, very piss poor at innovation or even just "new product development." For Immelt to use the word "entrepreneur" -- implying that he is a member of that club -- would be hilarious...unless I were a GE stockholder who's watched the stock price decline some 60% since Immelt took over while the S&P has been flat.