GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt: "Do as I say, not as I do"

NYC, Jul 12, 2011. In what must be described as the "height of hypocrisy" the head of General Electric told a jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Monday that businesses needed to take the lead on job creation.

At a conference where many of the comments were focused on government barriers to hiring, GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt acknowledged there needed to be some policy changes by Congress and the Obama administration.

But Immelt said that "the responsibility for hiring lay with businesses."

Essentially, Immelt scolded his peers, telling them to stop whining and start creating some jobs. And this is despite GE reducing their own workforce around 14% since President Obama took over in 2009.

Immelt said: "The people who are part of the business sector, the people in this room, have got to stop complaining about government and get some action underway," he told the group. "There's no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution."

What Immelt didn't say was that GE has been shedding jobs ever since President Barack Hussein Obama, D-Kenya, was sworn into office. From 323,000 in 2009 to 287,000 in 2010. That's 39,000 jobs lost!

And it even gets worse... not only has GE shed 39,000 jobs, they also moved 25,000 of the remaining jobs off shore! As the administration struggles to prod businesses to create jobs at home, GE has been busy sending them abroad. If every large company followed GE's example we might have a 20% unemployment rate today here in the USA.

And here is the irony of all this. Immelt was appointed by President Obama's to chair his "Council on Jobs and Competitiveness." 

He said the group has made a number of recommendations for changes in government policies that should be able to help job creation, such as the executive order announced Monday asking independent agencies to rid their books of old and outdated regulations.

Immelt said he is committed to working with Obama on other moves that can help hiring, and that he expects to have proposals by the end of the year that should help to create up to 1 million jobs.