Bloom Dumps Wall Street to Pursue ‘Worker Capitalism’

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-17/bloom-dumps-wall-street-to-pursue-worker-capitalism-.html

September 17, 2010, 11:45 AM EDT

By Jeff Green

(Corrects name, status of steel company in the second, 11th paragraphs.)

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- As a boy, Ron Bloom spent summers at Habonim camps, Jewish youth programs modeled on Israel’s kibbutzes that stressed the value of manual labor and social justice. As a teen he boycotted green grapes in support of Cesar Chavez, the farmworkers’ union leader.

He went on to Harvard Business School and Wall Street. Then he helped industrialist Wilbur Ross create International Steel Group Inc. and President Barack Obama bail out General Motors Co.

Now all he wants to do is save U.S. manufacturing.

For much of his 55 years, Bloom has been in training for his job as Obama’s senior counselor for manufacturing. He’s the guru behind the president’s drive to get the U.S. to create more factory jobs, a position he began on Labor Day in September 2009.

He’s been traversing the country ever since, trying to get executives to rethink a 50-year trend of sending work abroad. Good luck with that, skeptics say. Manufacturing has been on a steady decline and accounts for just 11 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, down from a peak of 28 percent in 1953.

Republicans, many of whom say they oppose anything smacking of what they call “industrial policy,” are poised to gain more power in Congress as polls show the public souring on the Administration’s efforts to revive a long-staggering economy.

Bankruptcy and Jobs

FULL story at link.

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