General Electric, parent company of MSNBC, sees profits in our tax dollars:
With businesses ranging from manufacturing to finance to media, GE is seen by many as a proxy for the broad U.S. economy, and tough economic times have yielded weak profits at the company. Its media division, NBC Universal, was profitable, but earnings fell 45% from last year largely on the high costs of airing the Super Bowl in February. GE’s consumer and industrial segment profit fell by 75%.
But other businesses are managing to weather the economic storm. Earnings in the company’s energy infrastructure division grew 19%, and its technology infrastructure business grew earnings by 6%.
Those units are expected to perform even better if GE is able to successfully bid on some of the government’s stimulus contracts. Immelt said on the conference call that stimulus should help speed up more than $100 billion of infrastructure projects in the company’s pipeline, including implementation of smart grid technology and health IT projects. But Immelt said it would take a while to realize stimulus profits, and GE would see little benefit until 2010 or 2011.
Maybe MSNBC pundits need a disclaimer whenever they talk about a stimulus project that might benefit their parent company?