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Intel CEO Paul Otellini had harsh words for the Obama administration at a tech conference Monday night, but was anyone listening other than those in... View Enlarged Image
The Economy: Everyone keeps asking: When will America's businesses start expanding and hiring again? Funny thing is, no one listens when they tell us.
It may not have gotten a lot of press, but we found the comments of Intel CEO Paul Otellini this week at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum quite enlightening.
At a time when many CEOs are hunkered down and holding back, Otellini let go with both barrels, warning Americans, who have become used to being the center of the innovation universe, to lower their expectations.
Unless government policies change, and fast, he said, "the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here."
That's pretty tough stuff. But Otellini was just getting warmed up.
As CNET news reports, Otellini said that at one time "no country was more attractive for startup capital ... We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That is simply no longer the case."
The Intel chief was harsh on the massive spending by the White House and Congress — and on the failure to extend the Bush tax cuts, the takeover of the health care industry, and the threat of new taxes on businesses to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
"I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs," he said. "And I think they're flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working."
If America's ruling class keeps going down this road, "people will not invest in the United States. They'll invest elsewhere."
Intel, the world's leader in semiconductor technology with $35 billion in sales and nearly 80,000 employees, is a good example.
"I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the U.S.," he said. And 90% of that added cost, he said, is due to taxes and regulations that other countries don't have.
Otellini isn't alone in his frustration.
Earlier in the week, Illinois Tool Works CEO David Speer, whose company employs 60,000 worldwide, laid out his dilemma — and that of hundreds of other CEOs: "I could borrow $2 billion tomorrow for 3 1/2%," Speer said. "But what am I going to do with it?"
Good question. Money is cheaper and more plentiful than it's ever been, especially for big corporations. But they're all looking in their crystal balls and see little but gloom.
Socialism: Quick, what's the murder capital of the world: Kabul? Juarez? Try Caracas, Venezuela, a city whose dictator, Hugo Chavez, has made murder a means of extending his control. The silent protest at Monday night's Miss Universe Pageant in Las Vegas was invisible to nearly everyone ...
The "Summer of Recovery" is looking more and more like the Beltway Chainsaw Massacre for America's workers. As President Obama lolls on Martha's Vineyard with his well-heeled Chicago pals, a new Reuters-Ipsos poll shows that 72% of people are very worried about joblessness and 67% are very ...
Abuse Of Power: How could the Obama administration top wasting a trillion-plus dollars on bogus "job creation"? With a taxpayer-funded report to the U.N. celebrating President Obama. When the president violated all traditional comportment and protocol in his State of the Union address in ...
Republicans are in the midst of an insurrection. Democrats are not. This vast gulf between the situations of the two parties — not some grand revolt against "the establishment" or "incumbents" — explains the year's primary results, including Tuesday's jarring outcomes in Florida and ...
JERUSALEM — Immersion in this region's politics can convince those immersed that history is cyclical rather than linear — that it is not one thing after another but the same thing over and over. This passes for good news because things that do change, such as weapons, often make matters ...
Posted By: calcon(200) on 8/26/2010 | 12:56 AM ET
I'm self-employed in the swimming pool business in SoCal (not so much last couple of years). New builds are down to one dog bone in a kennel. I just left a customers home who is sellig a multi-million dollar property that they own outright and they can't justify re-plastering the pool (it needs it). They were huge in the real estate business out here, so they know everything ther is to know about sellinf property. It is one scarey landscape out there, trust me...
Posted By: breakthebank(845) on 8/25/2010 | 11:26 PM ET
Crocodile Tears, that is what I am reading. It was guys like this that funded and voted for Obanna and Company. I gots no sympathy for this potential freeloader. He's got his hand out and is looking for his cut of the spoils. Come on Mr Otellini you helped put Bozo in the dealers box, so quit your whining and play your hand.
Posted By: Serfdumb(3535) on 8/25/2010 | 10:28 PM ET
Seems to me their policies are worse than misguided, look what they spent the stimulus money on, it was sold as 'shovel-ready infrastructure and job projects', yet $ went to special interests, pork, public unions and entitlements, only ~5% to infrastructure. Obamacare, Finreg, cap and trade, Card check, etc. are all anti-free market. Are they just clueless libs or are they purposely using the crisis and spend-side keynesian policies to expand Gov't & its power at the expense of evil capitalism?
Posted By: EbPaceNYC(450) on 8/25/2010 | 10:15 PM ET
@cali, your point about intellectual prop here in the US is a good one, but it reinforces the article vis a vis what ceo would be willing to take risks in the US with this admin in place. One only needs to talk to a GM bondholder to see how BO and his team views the sanctity of contracts and how they honor such items. I shudder to think how they would treat intellectual prop that doesn't toe their line.
Posted By: niteski(1145) on 8/25/2010 | 10:05 PM ET
Creating jobs is easy. Just lower the regulatory costs, lower the employment withholdings, lower resource costs, lower energy costs, lower taxation. Any one or combination will bring jobs back. The more the more brought back. It's really quite simple.
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