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US: NYTimes claims job hype to grease merger wheels

By  |  January 2, 2017

American companies are playing along with President-elect Donald Trump’s claims he is forcing businesses to create jobs in the US in order to benefit themselves, The New York Times editorial board claims.

In a Monday editorial, the board wrote, “President-elect Trump would like everybody to believe that his election is energizing the economy by forcing businesses to create thousands of jobs in the United States. And companies like Sprint seem perfectly happy to go along with this fiction because they know they can profit handsomely by cozying up to Mr. Trump.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said Sprint’s top executive had told him the company would add 5,000 jobs “because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope.” But it turns out that the jobs are part of a previous commitment by Sprint’s parent company, SoftBank, whose chief executive said at Trump Tower in December that it would invest $50 billion and create 50,000 jobs in the United States. And even that promise was part of a $100 billion technology fund that SoftBank announced in October, before the election. In sum, Mr. Trump’s statement was hot air, just like his tweet in which he thanked himselffor an increase in a consumer confidence index last month.

Read the entire editorial HERE