Trillions for Banks, A Dime for Manufacturers

On the occasion of Pres. Obama's first 100 days in office, the U.S. Business & Industry Council has weighed in with their own status report, and for manufacturers, it's not looking good. The Council, which is most assuredly not a conservative-leaning organization (nor, for that matter, are they a liberal-leaning group, either; they seem to play it pretty much right down the middle, with their main bias being pro-manufacturing), calls Pres. Obama to task for what they view as his "almost complete neglect of the cascading crisis in domestic manufacturing, while his economic team focuses obsessively on the financial industry."

Kevin Kearns, president of the USBIC, has written an open letter to Pres. Obama, which you can read here. The best line in the letter, in my opinion, is this one:

"To date, your economic team's approach seems to be trillions for banks, but hardly a dime for manufacturing. You save wrong-doing financial houses from failure, but send good-faith, if sometimes poorly run, manufacturing companies into bankruptcy -- a formula for disaster."

As we pointed out in our pre-election coverage last fall, neither of the major candidates for U.S. President had much, if anything, to say about what they'd do to help the manufacturing industry recover, so it should hardly come as a surprise that, 100 days in, Pres. Obama has yet to address the topic. The more I observe the current Administration's attitude toward U.S. manufacturing, the more I keep hearing the lines of that famous song from The Who: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." So far, it looks like we were indeed fooled again.