On the recordJanuary 19, 2011
Before all of the pomp and circumstance of tonight's State dinner honoring Chinese President Hu Jintao, a closed-door meeting took place between President Obama, the Chinese President, and the power brokers from some of the largest global corporations that seem to create more jobs outside this country than inside it: Steve Ballmer of Microsoft; Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric; Jim McNerney of Boeing; David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group; Ellenn Kullman, the CEO of DuPont. And many greedy Wall Street bankers showed up: John Thornton, the chairman of HSBC Holdings; and Lloyd Blankfein, my gosh, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs--where have we heard about them before?--whose imprudent firms are responsible for the economic meltdown that the rest of America is trying to dig out of as we speak tonight. Too often, these international corporations and megabanks have taken America's ingenuity and hard work that were built with so much effort and shipped them overseas, destroying American jobs and ballooning our half trillion dollar trade deficit. China remains a communist country, and it is a command-and-control economy described as 'Market Leninism'--not free enterprise. Yes, China's people should be able to develop their land and their economy and improve their lives. They surely need it. But their growth should not come at the expense of American jobs and our businesses and our workers.
