Golly, you just have to admire U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina’s chutzpah when it comes to commenting on killing jobs. Fiorina claims regulations, you know, the rules that keep our air and water from being poisoned, are the cause of our job losses. Funny, I didn’t hear her mention that deregulated Wall Street and big banks recklessly running up a housing bubble which popped and crashed both the economy and the labor market might have played a role. Nor did she comment on the lack of rules governing free trade that has driven most of our manufacturing jobs overseas.
Of course, Fiorina is an expert at killing jobs and destroying wealth. While CEO of Hewlett Packard, she fired 18,000 workers and ruined HP’s stock price while losing the company nearly a billion dollars in the process. Her work history demonstrates she doesn’t like following rules because following them has never been her forte. In a Forbes magazine article titled “Trading With The Enemy”, Fiorina’s company showed they knew how to get around the rules by using a front country to open trading with Iran. Hewlett Packard liked her performance so much, they fired her. Please don’t worry about Carly Fiorina, she is not languishing on unemployment. She walked away with $42 million dollars for her dismal, failed leadership. While HP did rid itself of her, they also got sued by their shareholders. Fiorina is a gift that keeps on giving.
When Carly Fiorina diagnoses what’s wrong with our economy, why we are losing jobs, and why we need to do away with the environmental rules that protect us, it is best to assume that the truth is the opposite of whatever she says.