Obama's Job-Creation Team Full of Job Cutters

Tomorrow, President Obama will meet with his council of advisers on job creation; trouble is, many of its members seem to know more about cutting jobs than adding them. The head of American Express, for example, was appointed to the council days after AmEx cut 550 jobs—despite the firm having made $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, a huge jump from the previous year. The CEO of Xerox is also an adviser; that company eliminated 4,500 jobs in the first half of this year.

Boeing, whose CEO is also on the council, announced 1,100 job cuts in January, the Los Angeles Times notes (some members' companies, like Intel and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, have added jobs). Other firms represented on the council have gotten a big government funding boost under Obama. "Nobody should expect this group to come up with innovative ways of investing in the American workforce," says Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "That's just not what these big companies do." Obama's administration says the president wants a range of advice, but that the decisions he makes "are ultimately the president's alone." (More President Obama stories.)