The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Jeff immelt, you need to rescue this dog!

    By Oxy Mora on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 10:46am |

    An underweight dog limps onto your property. Her eyes slay you. She's been running the roads of Fairfield county for months, fighting for food. She looks up at you as if to say,"
    I'm tired now. I need a hand"

    You make a gut decision, not a corporate one. You say to yourself, "I'm going to rescue this dog". After a few weeks of nourishment and vet bills you discover you were the one rescued. You become less selfish. And you are happier for it.

    The American economy is a dog. The people who are unemployed need a hand. Many of them have educational deficits, you couldn't hire them in your company and neither could I in my small business. They just don't have the skills. It would be disruptive and counter-productive.

    We need $200 million from G.E. and every other Fortune 500 company to form a back-to-work government/private sector enterprise. If you do this right, perhaps in a telethon, you could get the top 1000 companies to contribute, or the top 5000. The President needs to sit in front of a camera and telephone each of these CEO's one by one. Let the CEO tell the American public why the corporation cannot come to the rescue of the country they call home.

    Now, you may ask, why $200 million. Put it this way. When you go to a benefit auction at the Country Club of New Canaan and you see there an 1890 first edition of Emily Dickinson, the sticker doesn't say, "make a bid". It says, minimum bid, $25K. The same here. $200 million is what we're asking.

    Besides, $200 is a handy round number. It makes up $100 Billion, more if you do a good job with the other CEO's you're supposed to be keeping tabs with. You could raise a third of it on the commuter train into the city. The Fortune 500 is sitting on $2 Trillion in cash. $200 million a big hit? Any of the companies can go to the market in a heart beat, issue a few bonds at 1%, and have the money in a month.

    As for organization, pick a plan. The Catholic church is the most successful horizontal organization in the history of the world. Use that. Or, hell, use the Catholic church for all I care. It doesn't matter. What kind of work doesn't matter. As long as the money gets into the pockets of the unemployed, it works, and they work. We will call the enterprise G.E. Saves--,er, on second thought, Corporations Contributing to the resCue.--or CCC for short. Come to think about it I would add Baptist churches to the distribution channels.

    The most amazing thing about CCC?. The contributors will get most of their money back. It is said that unemployment insurance cycles directly back into the economy. As the economy improves, corporate sales go up a fraction without a dime of extra expense. Later, when the economy has recovered and tax revenues are up, write the donation off as a bad debt and take a tax deduction. The original donation will probably cost you next to nothing in actual cash flow. The small boats lift the big boats.

    Obviously, I am using Mr. Immelt, the CEO of G.E, as a foil. Any corporate CEO could kick this off. I just thought Immelt would be a good one to start with--have a kick-off meeting in the White House, sleep over in the Lincoln bedroom.

    To that CEO with courage and a sense of how bad things are in this country for the unemployed: Rescue this dog! You will be a hero in her eyes.

      

     

     

    Comments

    Richard Day (he has an amazing stash) or anyone, please contribute pictures of rescue dogs. Or better yet, pictures of the unemployed. And let's get something straight between us. The economy is the dog, not the unemployed. Thanks, Oxy.


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 11:11am


    by Richard Day on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 11:19am

    There are scores of live rescue dogs at this link:

    http://www.youtube.com/user/baldwinparkdogs?blend=7&ob=5#p/u/2/WWc30978zwg

    And you can just go to youtube and type in 'rescue dogs'.

    You can go to Google and type in rescue dogs along with your locality.


    by Richard Day on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 11:23am

    Richard, I am much obliged. Talk about lacking skills, ugh, me.


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 11:36am

    Additional note. It's obvious Congress is not going to appropriate a dime for unemployment insurance, infrastructure spending or other stimulus. The exception is a transportation bill, but the immediate impact on the economy is unclear.

    What is not obvious but highly suspect is whether Congress is intentionally placing a drag on the economy in order that the economy continues to struggle and Obama fails.

    Frankly, I don't know if corporations are holding back for the same reason. I doubt it. I think they just have better investment opportunities overseas. Should they hire and spend money even when they know the domestic demand isn't there? That's a hard argument to make to a Board of Directors. But could the Obama administration use the bully pulpit for a change to get corporations out of their normal boxes and take direct action--well, that would be an issue of Presidential leadership, wouldn't it. Audacity, remember? We will never know until we try.


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 11:51am

    Oxy Mora, this is great--I love the idea of the telethon & have been thinking about something similar for the 2 Million jobs by Christmas initiative--with a big chart like they use for telethons and United Way drives. Also, I love the idea of the President phoning the CEOs and getting them to explain live exactly why they couldn't just accept lower profits in order to provide jobs here instead of overseas.

    I will say, though, I think we should dump this thing on the private sector first and get them to admit they can't do it without govt. help/centralized planning. We really need people to get over the idea that the private sector does everything better than government if we're going to move forward. Otherwise the private sector will just continue to whine about how govt makes it impossible for them to act.

    ****

    Maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing a strong populist thread developing since this whole debt ceiling thing...which I think is very good. We've hired so many experts to make the Democratic case for things--time for some simple ideas that give people a way in to a deeper discussion and put the Republicans on the spot in a way everyone can understand.


    by erica20 on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 3:05pm

    Erica, thanks for your comments. As far as corporate profits are concerned, a $200 million loan to a job enterprise or infrastructure bank would have almost no effect on profits because a bond issue would cost so little in interest as to be statistically insignificant. And even that is tax deductible. One of our problems is that the people who need low interest loans can't get them. You need to be too big to fail to get 1% loans. But the corporations can do it. The $2Trillion in cash in the Fortune 500 is essentially sitting idle.

    We don't have an economic crisis. We have a crisis of will and of imagination.

    I was just listening to a guest on MSNBC, Leo Hindery, a former corporate executive.He  said what you just said. There is a strong populist thread developing and it needs to bed channeled the way it has been in the past, not just the left, more importantly the right.  What we need are simple straight forward ideas. And the will and imagination to try new things.

    I guess I wasn't surprised to hear Mr. Hindrey say that the stumbling block to the infra-structure bank is Geithner himself. He wants only his kind of bank, the Wall St. type and the President listens to him. When I hear things like that I wonder why we place any faith at all in this administration.  


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 6:01pm