Obama has investments in companies that ship jobs overseas

Obama’s own portfolio shows a willingness to invest in American corporations that have shifted employment overseas.

In his most recent financial disclosure from 2011, Obama and his wife reported having between $200,000 and $450,000 in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, which invests in the largest U.S. corporations. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as of Sept. 30, 2011, the fund’s biggest holding was 8,272,039 shares of Apple Inc., then valued at $3.2 billion.
The New York Times reported in January:

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas….
“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.
“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

The mutual fund that the Obamas have invested in also held 94,582,281 million shares of General Electric, valued at $1.4 billion, as of the SEC filing. The multinational conglomorate has a long history of outsourcing – according to a new book  cited by the New York Times, in 1989, “G.E. became the first U.S. company to outsource software work to India.” Obama also has close ties to GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, who was appointed as chairman of his outside panel of economic advisers last year.

In addition to Apple and GE, the Obamas’ fund listed 10,655,961 shares of International Business Machines, valued at $1.9 billion. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2009, “The technology giant has been steadily building its work force in India and other locations while reducing the number of workers based in the U.S. Foreign workers accounted for 71% of Big Blue’s nearly 400,000 employees at the start of the year, up from about 65% in 2006.” (Full story)