By Henry Briggs columnist for Main Line Suburban Life.
CEOs are smart, focused and successful. If they need to cut costs, they “downsize.” They bring in their own “team.” They take advantage of lower costs in other countries and “outsource” whenever possible. They evaluate and sell off money-losing parts of the business. Their assignment, according to laws of incorporation throughout the country, is the profitability of their companies. Period.
With the country in deep trouble, it might be smart to hire one of these CEOs to straighten things out.
That’s the logic, for example, behind Meg Whitman and Carl Paladino running in California and New York for governor and Pat Toomey running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Whitman made eBay a mega-success. Paladino made $150 million on real-estate development in New York. Toomey’s fortune came from selling derivatives.
So how would these folks turn the country around? They’d cut costs big time: fire government workers; outsource Medicare to India and Bangladesh; outsource Social Security to Goldman Sachs et al.; outsource our military-industrial complex to China. At the same time they would buy stock in Chinese military contractors, Indian and Bangladeshian medical centers and, of course, Goldman Sachs. They would replace uncooperative representatives and senators with their own “teams.”
And they would sell off money-losers. The biggest money-losers for the U.S., right now, are the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. CEOs would evaluate U.S. equity in both countries. And they would find buyers if they could. This, too, would take time, because no one has ever marketed wars before – after Saddam Hussein, who’s left, Ahmadinejad?
I figure the whole project would take at least... 150 years.
OK, I’m kidding... well, sort of.
In fact we have lots of CEOs campaigning on their business résumés.
But there’s are big differences between the worlds of business and politics. First, CEOs buy politicians; politicians don’t buy CEOs. Second, CEOs can dictate; politicians can’t. Politicians can’t cut costs single-handedly, because all 535 in Congress hold the purse strings – collectively. So politicians have to bring others over to their side. That’s especially difficult when politicians are owned by competing companies (unless the corporation is big enough to buy the entire Congress, and neither Facebook nor Google are quite there yet). Third, politicians can’t outsource jobs, because people living in cars tend to take out their disappointment in the voting booth; politicians hate to disappoint their voters.
So politicians need a different set of skills and attitudes from CEOs. That is why people like Gov. John Corzine didn’t help New Jersey much. It’s one reason why Whitman and Paladino probably won’t help their states. It’s why Toomey, who pushed the financial deregulation that triggered the economic meltdown, won’t help either.
Now say a whole group of politicians, not a CEO, won the big one: the presidency and both houses. Say they wanted to turn the economy around, resolve two wars, cut some costs (health-care costs for example) and repair education and infrastructure. Without the ability to dictate, as CEOs do, they would have slow going. Even at warp speed, it would take, oh, four to six years.
And suppose their opponents wouldn’t cooperate at all. Suppose their opponents’ goal was to make them fail, regardless of what it meant for the country. Suppose their opponents just gummed up the engine of government whenever they could.
Suppose that, in spite of it all, these politicians actually made headway: nearly ended one war and established an end-date for the other, reduced job losses and brought the Dow Jones back nearly 50 percent from 2008 (October 2007, 14,000; December 2008, 8,700; Oct. 11, 2010, 11,000), brought health care to many previously uninsured and stopped a recession from becoming a depression... in just two years.
Would you fire them all and put ex-CEOs in their place?
CEOs are smart, focused and successful. If they need to cut costs, they “downsize.” They bring in their own “team.” They take advantage of lower costs in other countries and “outsource” whenever possible. They evaluate and sell off money-losing parts of the business. Their assignment, according to laws of incorporation throughout the country, is the profitability of their companies. Period.
With the country in deep trouble, it might be smart to hire one of these CEOs to straighten things out.
That’s the logic, for example, behind Meg Whitman and Carl Paladino running in California and New York for governor and Pat Toomey running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Whitman made eBay a mega-success. Paladino made $150 million on real-estate development in New York. Toomey’s fortune came from selling derivatives.
So how would these folks turn the country around? They’d cut costs big time: fire government workers; outsource Medicare to India and Bangladesh; outsource Social Security to Goldman Sachs et al.; outsource our military-industrial complex to China. At the same time they would buy stock in Chinese military contractors, Indian and Bangladeshian medical centers and, of course, Goldman Sachs. They would replace uncooperative representatives and senators with their own “teams.”
And they would sell off money-losers. The biggest money-losers for the U.S., right now, are the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. CEOs would evaluate U.S. equity in both countries. And they would find buyers if they could. This, too, would take time, because no one has ever marketed wars before – after Saddam Hussein, who’s left, Ahmadinejad?
I figure the whole project would take at least... 150 years.
OK, I’m kidding... well, sort of.
In fact we have lots of CEOs campaigning on their business résumés.
But there’s are big differences between the worlds of business and politics. First, CEOs buy politicians; politicians don’t buy CEOs. Second, CEOs can dictate; politicians can’t. Politicians can’t cut costs single-handedly, because all 535 in Congress hold the purse strings – collectively. So politicians have to bring others over to their side. That’s especially difficult when politicians are owned by competing companies (unless the corporation is big enough to buy the entire Congress, and neither Facebook nor Google are quite there yet). Third, politicians can’t outsource jobs, because people living in cars tend to take out their disappointment in the voting booth; politicians hate to disappoint their voters.
So politicians need a different set of skills and attitudes from CEOs. That is why people like Gov. John Corzine didn’t help New Jersey much. It’s one reason why Whitman and Paladino probably won’t help their states. It’s why Toomey, who pushed the financial deregulation that triggered the economic meltdown, won’t help either.
Now say a whole group of politicians, not a CEO, won the big one: the presidency and both houses. Say they wanted to turn the economy around, resolve two wars, cut some costs (health-care costs for example) and repair education and infrastructure. Without the ability to dictate, as CEOs do, they would have slow going. Even at warp speed, it would take, oh, four to six years.
And suppose their opponents wouldn’t cooperate at all. Suppose their opponents’ goal was to make them fail, regardless of what it meant for the country. Suppose their opponents just gummed up the engine of government whenever they could.
Suppose that, in spite of it all, these politicians actually made headway: nearly ended one war and established an end-date for the other, reduced job losses and brought the Dow Jones back nearly 50 percent from 2008 (October 2007, 14,000; December 2008, 8,700; Oct. 11, 2010, 11,000), brought health care to many previously uninsured and stopped a recession from becoming a depression... in just two years.
Would you fire them all and put ex-CEOs in their place?
