Obama's jobs summit corporate participants are jobs exporters

I assumed President Obama's jobs summit was a dog-and-pony-show. I was correct, as the Washington Post proves.

Some of the powerful executives who advised President Obama on Monday about how to solve the unemployment problem in the United States are themselves focused overseas for growth.

Five of the biggest companies on Obama's jobs council, General Electric, Citigroup, Intel, Procter & Gamble and DuPont, rely on foreign revenues for a majority of their sales — a shift that’s occurred just in the past several years for most of these firms. As other countries' economies recover more quickly, these corporations have taken advantage. Earnings at GE were up 77 percent in the latest quarter. Intel is enjoying record profits.

A central assumption in Obama's economic plan is that private-sector growth will translate into more jobs in this country.

But that strategy could be less potent as decades of globalization have loosened the connection between the healthof large U.S. firms and the economy, analysts say.

The Post goes on to explain that from 1999 to 2009 large U.S multinationals reduced their domestic workforce by 2.9 million--which is more people than live in Obama's hometown of Chicago. But they added 2.4 million jobs overseas.

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