General Electric CEO Immelt: ‘Time to hunker up’

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General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt had some things to say Tuesday about the New World Order for businesses in the aftermath of the economic and financial cataclysms of the last 18 months.

A few comments Immelt made at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal, as reported by Bloomberg News and Canada’s Financial Post:

-- ‘The government has moved in next door and it ain’t leaving. You could fight it if you want but society wants change. And government is not going away. . . . We are going to have to deal in a government-structured world.’

-- ‘Do I agree with President Obama on everything. No. Did he get elected without my vote? Yes. But he’s my president and we’ve got to be involved in the way change is going to take place -- or we really risk not having the voice of business broadly felt.’

-- ‘My suspicion is that … taxes are going up, and [federal] spending is going to have to come down. This has to be addressed.’

-- ‘As a company you have to invest now. You have to invest when things are darkest. I hope this is a V-shaped recovery. I hope this is like 1982. That’s not what I’m counting on. If you are hunkering down, you are going to get crushed. It’s time to hunker up.’

-- ‘We are going to plant a lot of seeds in the resource-rich parts of the world because we just think the long-term tailwind on energy prices is only going up.’

-- ‘I’ve been going to China for 25 years, my entire career with GE. I always leave with a headache. I always think, ‘How do we beat these guys in 30 years?’ And every year my headache gets bigger. This is the high-tech corridor of the world, China and India. They have more engineers than we have.’

-- Tom Petruno