Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on CNN: 150 CEOs So Far Agree to Withhold Campaign Contributions
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, says 150 CEOs have heeded his call to withhold campaign contributions from politicians of both parties, He stressed that this isn’t aimed at President Barack Obama, said the country sorely needs bipartisan cooperation and gave his ideas — which don’t have a talk show political culture tone to them as do most politician’s polarizing comments these days — on the economy.
Here are a few tidbits from the show transcript:
His prescription for economic recovery:
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST “FAREED ZAKARIA GPS”: The president is out there with a jobs plan…on the Republican side, you have people saying what you need more than anything else is to cut government spending…Which of them would you prefer to see?
HOWARD SCHULTZ, CEO, STARBUCKS: …It’s not one versus the other. It is we need cooperation and we need co-authorship. We need a combination of both. Let me take a different tack if I can. In the mid-1940s, something was created. It was significant, it was innovative, it was bold and it was courageous. It was the Marshall Plan. Now let’s take a step back.
Can you imagine the situation today where the Marshall Plan would have any opportunity whatsoever in this existing political climate to succeed? And the answer, unequivocally, is no. I would suggest that our problems, domestically, are as great as the problems were when the Marshall Plan and President Truman convinced America and a Republican Congress this was the right thing to do.
We need a domestic agenda. And we need a forcing function that addresses the significant problems and, as Tom Friedman said in his book, we need truth-telling, once and for all. Tell us the truth. We don’t have a $14 trillion deficit. It’s $47 trillion, and it’s things like that. Unemployment in American is not 9.1 percent when you’re an African-American or you’re Hispanic. There’s no access to credit for small businesses.
On why he feels people should withhold 2012 campaign contributions:
ZAKARIA: You have made this appeal that you want people to withhold campaign contributions.
SCHULTZ: I want to suspend contributions because I don’t believe that writing a check, based on a $4 billion election cycle in 2008 and an estimated $5.5 billion in 2012 is what we should be doing. Instead, I want to send this powerful signal to Washington that I and other like-minded CEOs, now 150 of us, are dissatisfied with the status quo. And we are begging you to understand that we need solutions to significant problems.
And I also think businesses and corporations — and this is where I feel differently than some of my brethren — we have a deep responsibility as well. And we have to do our part. We have to invest in the economy and we have to create a sense of optimism that we still believe in America. America’s best days are ahead of us, and we believe that investing in America, despite the landscape and all the information is still the right thing to do.
GO HERE to read the entire transcript.
Schultz gives his opinion of Obama (we need “big, bold ideas” and “transformation” that “comes from leadership. We’re in a crisis.”:
His views on corporate and consumer confidence:
Schultz’s comments will be of particular interest to moderate and independent voters. Many will share his views on the problems and what’s needed to fix them — fixes seemingly beyond the ability of broken governnment, mega partisanship and ideological polarization.
6 Responses to “Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on CNN: 150 CEOs So Far Agree to Withhold Campaign Contributions”
What a laugh. Like I care what these people do. There has never been Bigger or Bolder ideas than what President Obama has brought forth and done so in a very non-partisan way.
Save your money for the taxes you are going to pay big shot. The nation is already polarized into two camps. Business is destroying this nation with their greed, and the people are going to save it.
He’s not asking them to accept his ideas, but asking politicians to start offering new ideas. I wish him luck with that, but I don’t know how far that will take him. It’s been obvious to many that a good restart is needed, but it’s much harder to get people to agree what the end goal policies would be.
Prof he needs to do just that if he is ever going to franchise out his businesses that he has refused to do, (to his own determent), to date. He cannot hope too sell off until small business loans once again open up. Now he is stuck with a peaking business, and time is a wasting, as his Starbucks start slipping down the other side of that peak, right when taxes be going up… .
He NEEDS a loose monetary policy or he’ll have to sell out to Sara Lee, or another competitor/suitor for far less money.
@Allen
How is the Fed supposed to get any looser than 0%? You can’t tell me that monetary policy will work when it’s been pushed to its max without working.
Prof-
Well it can’t. But we are not talking about the Fed, we are talking about lending policy of our Commercial Capital resources. The ones sitting on all the money. It’s like 60% of our nation’s GNP is excess capital sitting in banks and corporate accounts right now. This money should have been and can still be taxed.
The man MUST get government to do something to convince banks and investment capital firms to lend, because they are not. Instead they are just sitting on the money waiting for God knows what.
The Starbucks CEO wants less taxes for business hidden behind all that “lets get together cumbya” stuff. That’s what he wants. He wants easy for himself money in the bank.
Now go evaluate Sara Lee’s expansion into the coffee business. Easy Pickens to see his motivation. It ain’t non-partisan, cumbya, patriotic, can’t we just all get along motivation. He has a direct monetary reason.
@Allen
Yes, the money is tied up in the banks and corporations, because that’s who the Fed lends it to. The problem is a real tough one to solve, because the damage has already been done. You can’t, for instance, make thousands of houses in Las Vegas worth something now. The banks, governments, many businesses, and many people have spent at least a couple of decades through borrowing, which was the goal of two decades of loose monetary policy. Now that people have lost confidence, which is a predictable result, there’s no easy way to fix it. The mistakes were made in the 70s and 80s. You can’t fix decades of stupid in a couple of years, especially not with more of the same policy that got you there in the first place.
The reason that the banks are hanging onto the money, is because they’re trying to earn enough to fix their balance sheets. Since the Fed can only loan out money, it’s difficult to repair a balance sheet quickly. Even if you loan that money to the people (which is personally where I would have started, not the banks) they’d also use it to pay off debts, or at least restructure their loans. If we’re lucky, we’ve got at least a decade of pain coming just to get to the point where growth might even be possible again.