Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s (GE) CEO attacked other business leaders in a speech at West Point, saying that his generation “had succumbed to ‘meanness and greed’ that had harmed the US economy and increased the gap between the rich and the poor.”
Immelt neglected to mention, however, that he took home $14,100,000 in compensation last year. Guess he was talking about all those other greedy execs.
“We are at the end of a difficult generation of business leadership … tough-mindedness, a good trait, was replaced by meanness and greed, both terrible traits,” Immelt said, “Rewards became perverted. The richest people made the most mistakes with the least accountability.”
Immelt’s didn’t stop there. According to the Financial Times, he also linked bad leadership to growing inequality.
“The bottom 25 per cent of the American population is poorer than they were 25 years ago. That is just wrong,” he said. “Ethically, leaders do share a common responsibility to narrow the gap between the weak and the strong.”
Two problems with Immelt’s attack. First, he’s one of the highest paid U.S. executives. And second, although GE took $80 billion in TARP funds, Immelt somehow used his connections to the Obama administration to get GE exempted from executive pay cuts that hit similar firms.
Here’s how Business Week spells out Immelt’s 2008 income:
TOTAL COMPENSATION in 2008
Total Annual Cash Compensation $3,300,000
Total Short Term Compensation $3,300,000
Other Long Term Compensation $7,233,137
Total Calculated Compensation $14,096,603
Contributing to Immelt’s pot calling the kettle black syndrome, the non-greedy CEO somehow got GE and himself exempted from pay restricitions imposed on other companies by Obama’s pay czar.
The Lonely Conservative reports:
Continue reading “GE CEO attacks executive greed, made $14.1 million last year”
