Charlie Rose

lamber  03/11/2011 07:56 AM Report

Fantastic talk!

NeilMacCallister  08/05/2010 01:16 AM Report

(..Bush never wrote a budget, TARP has not returned $840 bilion dollars)

NeilMacCallister  08/05/2010 12:21 AM Report

Sorry, but I object to Mr. Ross’ unsupported and polemic claims that “Every year George Bush cut R&D budgets”, and “Geithner’s TARP program has returned a 20% profit for the nation”.

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Now, about our American lack of students’ scientific achievements:

We should encourage the scientific “feeder” programs, like electricity, carpentry, plumbing, nursing, and farming.

Education used to be “Preparation for adult employment”, ..today it is just the babysitting of children while their parents work, in a laboratory for new group-psychology grant-studies.

Here in California, we actually have LOTTERIES to select students for one of the very few yearly slots for nursing, or electrical training. Only the lucky few are allowed to move forward.

We should seriously just forget about these “TARP” finaglings, ..and our fixations on healthcare and personal retirement plans. Let’s instead focus ourselves on work, and the future!!

Let’s replace a few “Medieval Studies” high school teachers with a licensed CPA or a journeyman welder!

If we teach a student how to wire a house when she’s 14 yrs old, she may be designing a better sun-power station when she’s 24!

TedMorgan  08/04/2010 12:05 AM Report

My brother is an engineer as it my brother-in-law. Both are creative men. They both do high-end work in their fields. I think that they find their work rewarding. They earn decent salaries. My nephew prepares for work in science or engineering, as does my grandniece. I think one finds the work intrinsically rewarding. Both look forward to doing rewarding work in engineering. I doubt that these members of my family regret their vocational choices.

Regardless, Mr. Ross represents financial operators who work around rewarding those who make investments in creating intellectual property he then exploits after bankruptcy courts strip intellectual property and offers it for nothing to people like Mr. Ross. Mr. Ross accumulates immense wealth while those who did the creative work live much less financially rewarding lives.

In his own way, Mr. Ross is a rich man who does a bit more than corporate raiders like Carl Icahn or Frank Lorenzo but not much more. Mr. Ross knows who and what he is—a parasite. When Mr. Rose interviews him, he needs to make this clearer.

TedMorgan  08/03/2010 11:32 PM Report

bear the responsiblity!

TedMorgan  08/03/2010 11:23 PM Report

Wilbur Rose is a creative and interesting man. He has good skills in taking advantage of what is left of failed business enterprises. In many ways, he is wise, perceptive, and even helpful. I enjoy hearing his comments and opinions. I learn from him.

However, it is an illusion to think that he really understands unions when he lets other people bare the responsibilities bankrupt companies gave over to others. Further, in one way or anther, he bears responsibility even if not yet legal responsibility for the death of coal miners.

Mr. Rose’s failure to address this during the interview diminished Mr. Rose. It is a shame when public television becomes a means to glorify a selfish man like Mr. Ross.

NeilMacCallister  08/03/2010 10:41 PM Report

How does Mr. Ross feel about the new Oakland-SF Bay Bridge bringing in all its steel from China? That, after both the nearby Carquinez Bridge, and the Antioch Bridge ALSO bought all their steel from China and Korea?

Both the U.S. Steel and American Bridge companies had operating steel plants within bicycling distance of the 1976 Antioch Bridge, and a thousand workers hoping for those jobs, ..but our state government gave the contract to factories 10,000 miles away.

The American workers were left to file for unemployment checks.

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California did this again for the nearby Carquinez Bridge, and now also for that Oakland-SF $10 billion dollar structure.

..and California wonders where all the jobs went!!

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The China plant now employs 20,000 workers, ..and the Chinese economy is growing at 8% a year!

Is that what you mean when you say the Chinese are just simply smarter than us?????

Slim  08/03/2010 06:29 PM Report

Mr.Ross laments the unavailability of home grown engineers and scientists which domestic corporations could more easily shape, brainwash and then exploit. Be that as it may, untold numbers of potential engineers, visionaries, musicians, et. al. are routinely wasted unmourned and unnoticed, because they are members of the 25% of our black and brown brethren routinely discarded by our racist system.

Sugarland  08/03/2010 04:18 PM Report

Comment Charlie Rose-Wilbur Ross 2 AUG 10

Wilbur Ross expressed admiration for the Chinese 5 year plans as executed by the Communist. He recommends that the US adopt plans for industrial development and education. He called for more engineers and scientists and R & D.

However, the US has always worked better and more competitively when incentives were in place to direct the investment of time and treasure into producing real value. Rigid plans have difficulty competing with this model.

The emergence of the financial community over the past several decades, where now it produces 40 % of the GDP, has proven to be a strong disincentive for engineers and scientists and R & D.

Case in point: LTV spent $2.5 B and five years to invigorate their steel business. Engineers and scientists and R & D played a major role in this. Because of poor management LTV went bankrupt and Wilbur Ross bought the equipment for a liquidation value of $90 MM. The intellectual property supplied by the technical people was evaluated at zero and many of these people lost their jobs.

Within two years Wilbur Ross had restarted the steel company as the world’s low cost producer undoubtedly driven by the intellectual property for which they paid nothing. Wilbur Ross cashed out Billions in a merger with Mittal. What is the incentive for technical people to produce new plant designs and industries if the financial people take all the money?

There is a president for a country with an overbearing financial system. The magnificent achievements of the Industrial Revolution were driven by the engineers and scientists and R & D of Brittain. The British had a dominating position in world’s technical intellectual property. However, the technical people were not rewarded. Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” lists seven key innovators in the textile industry which initiated the revolution. Only one made money from their textile inventions, three died in poverty, two received government grants and Eli Whitney, of cotton gin fame, made his money as an arms dealer.

The English economy was dominated by the financial and merchant sectors, but the technical pipeline was allowed to dry up. After a decade or so, England slipped into being a second rate power.

DennisHancock  08/03/2010 01:13 PM Report

Of the many thoughtful views Mr. Ross offered about the country's current situation, I found it interesting that he would bring up a topic appearing more frequently in discussions about fixing America. And that is the observation this country isn't producing as many technically trained people as China and India. Of course, this goes hand in hand with a country that doesn't make much (or anything.)

As Mr. Ross speaks in future public forums, I could offer this suggestion for him to align his observations about engineering talent with current reality: not only is America not producing enough new technical talent, it is also sidelining a lot of existing technical talent through unemployment.

REMant  08/03/2010 11:45 AM Report

Not just the engineers, we could use more ppl like him, too, tho I think we actually have them, just that no one listens to or interviews them, or they don't pipe up. He reminds me, however, of the early 1990's when ppl wrote books on how Japan would take over the world. Instead money, and the power it brought, corrupted them fairly thoroughly, the rise of China, Malaysia, et al, pulled the rug out from under them, and the praise of industrial policy, turned to criticism. We need industrial policy, but I am not sure it needs to be made in Washington. I don't disagree either with the idea that we lived beyond our means, but we couldn't have to the extent we did, even with the availability of a "glut of savings" from abroad, if it were not aided by fiscal and monetary policy, so I wouldn't agree with the idea that it is all due to a lack of direction in education, R&D, etc. Things would have ground to a halt much sooner if so much demand were not being created by govt and bank policy, which, in turn, turned a lot of people away from productive interests. A lot of business ppl do not think they should be concerned about either the virtue or the welfare of ppl in any particular country - a commonplace even before Marx wrote about it - yet they do agree when pressed that good workers are needed and realize that they need to do something to ensure that. Too often the prescription has been to starve them, but if they thought about it even more they'd realize that they need to have good markets as well, and that means ppl who can both appreciate and afford their products. If it is true that ppl have to make things that are worth the price, it is also true that ppl have to be able to afford them. It is thus really not possible to hop around from mkt to mkt exploiting ppl. And likewise it does no good overall to siphon off immigrants. I've often argued in the past that America made its fortune in large part with ppl trained elsewhere, just as it used foreign investment to do it, but a time has to come when both the education and the money come from within.