"Moving at the speed of business" was one of the great corporate slogans of our lifetimes. In just six words, UPS declared that they didn't just move fast, they expected their customers to. From 1995 to 2002, it was a boast and a compliment about speed, agility, and affordability — at a time when business adaptation of the internet demanded more and more of all three.
Then there's moving at the speed of government — slow, cumbersome, expensive. Presidentish Joe Biden has always moved at the speed of government. If that.
Today, I have a couple more examples of "If that" about the man about to shuffle off into the sunset. But don't you worry — Biden won't have to pay for this latest late largess. You and I will.
Remember in the first half of Biden's one-and-done administration when the country faced a computer chip crisis so severe that Congress had to throw more than a quarter of a trillion dollars at it? That's $280 billion to you and me and generations down the road.
One recipient of that emergency aid, Microchip Technology, decided to forgo its $162 million share of Biden's industrial-scale slush funds. "I have put the negotiations with the CHIPS office on hold for now," said CEO Steve Sanghi at a UBS conference, according to a Bloomberg report this week. "Probably, by the time I get my arms around it, we're into the new administration."
"The grant was applied to maybe almost a year ago when everybody thought that the factory capacity was never enough, and the world was gonna build silicon fabs forever," Sanghi continued. "Today, we have too much capacity."
Why, it's almost as though businesses respond to changing market conditions faster than government does.
And Another Thing: Why did UPS ever quit using "Moving at the speed of business" for "What can brown do for you?" I'm willing to concede that maybe the old slogan had gone a little stale after seven years, but switching to "What can brown do for you?" Really? The connotations were never pleasant.
On a much bigger scale than Microchip Technology, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was forced out on Monday after his three-year effort to turn the company around was deemed a failure by the board of directors. According to another Bloomberg report, Gelsinger “was given the option to retire or be removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel.”
Intel was once the unbeatable leader in CPU tech, in no small part because its heydey CEO, Andy Grove, believed that "Only the paranoid survive." But a later CEO, Paul Otellini, dismissed the idea of putting its chips in Apple's first iPhone and eventually ceded the mobile market. Since then, Intel failed to see the AI chip revolution coming. Samsung, Taiwan Semi, and now Nvidia all ate Intel's lunch and federal grants won't bring it back.
Nevertheless, as a Thanksgiving gift, Biden's Department of Commerce last week awarded Intel up to $7.86 billion in "direct funding" from CHIPS.
Maybe they'll spend it bringing Andy Grove back to life.
Speaking of multibillion-dollar failures we get to pay for, here's another biggie.
Stellantis owns the Chrysler Group of auto brands, including Chrysler, Dodge, Ram Trucks (which they spun off from Dodge), and Jeep. The European-based company has let Chrysler and Dodge basically die on the vine for lack of new vehicles, with only Ram and Jeep as moneymakers. But then Stellantis bet big on taking Jeep upmarket and electrifying both Jeep and Ram.
The result: New Vehicle Inventory Swells With Stellantis Drowning In Unsold Cars.
But Biden was never one to let real-world results get in the way of his big, stupid, expensive ideas. On Monday, Biden's Department of Energy announced a $7.5 billion loan to Stellantis and Samsung to build batteries in Indiana for cars no one is buying.
How much do you want to bet that loan ever gets paid back?
They fail, we pay — it's the Biden way.
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