Jeffrey Immelt doesn’t seem to know much about business:
“If I had one thing to do over again I would not have talked so much about green,” Immelt said at an event sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even though I believe in global warming and I believe in the science … it just took on a connotation that was too elitist; it was too precious and it let opponents think that if you had a green initiative, you didn’t care about jobs. I’m a businessman. That’s all I care about, is jobs.”
Hate to break it to you, but if you’re a real businessman, what you care about is profits, and not pandering to the politically correct by declaring your fealty to the planet, or job creation. The purpose of a business is not to create jobs, and if you think it is, then the business is likely to suffer, particularly if it’s all that you care about. Immelt seems like a character right out of Atlas Shrugged.
He does care about profit.
In a corporatist state, that means pandering and politics.
While I have no problem with caring about profits first, that runs into a problem when all that matters are *this quarter’s* profits. Easiest way to maximize those? Liquidate the company. Lots of profits! Enough for a good CEO to retire on even…
Pandering to greens is profitable, just like most forms of pandering.
Yours,
Tom