Paul Krugman on ABC’s This Week Roundtable:

KRUGMAN: [T]he whole competitiveness thing is a bad metaphor… The country is not a corporation. You know, a CEO who manages to lay off a large part of his workforce and increase profits is a success. Well, America has managed to lay off a large part of its workforce and profits are hitting new records, and that is not a success. So these are not similar.

The idea that we are reassuring blue-collar workers by appointing to a not very important, but still a symbolic government post the CEO of a company which has most of its workers outside the United States, earns most of its profits outside the United States, and is now these days more of a financial firm than it is a manufacturing firm, in reality, was a major recipient of bailout funds — you know, it’s — now, all of this may be a way for Obama to find a more business-friendly way to sell more public investment, which is a good thing.

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