from Business Week, via Reclaim Democracy!:
Are Transnational Corporations Good for America?By Michael Mandel
First Published by Business Week, February 28, 2008
High in the hills overlooking Corning, N.Y., the company named after the town has recently broken ground on a $300 million expansion of its research laboratories. Flush with cash from booming overseas sales, the glass giant is amping up its product development efforts at home. "It's important for the functioning of our innovation machine that we be in one location," says Corning Inc. President Peter F. Volanakis.
That's good news for the residents of Steuben County , where Corning is the largest employer. Since 2005 they have watched their unemployment rate drop faster than that of neighboring counties, in part because of Corning's commitment to the area and its ability to sell around the world.
Americans are going to need quite a few more Cornings—global companies willing to invest in the U.S. —to ease the pain of the economic slowdown. The big multinationals are the go-to guys right now: They've got plenty of cash and soaring profits from overseas operations. They're highly productive and innovative, more so than domestic companies. And unlike consumers, banks, and smaller companies, the multinationals aren't constrained by the credit crunch.
Indeed, the top 150 U.S.-based nonfinancial multinationals, which include the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, eBay and Sara Lee, had more than $500 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2007. Some of the big global players with extensive operations in the U.S. —companies such as Toyota and Siemens—are equally flush. By contrast, smaller domestic-oriented companies have weaker profit outlooks and more short-term debt and other liabilities on their books and therefore are having a harder time borrowing. .......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2008/transnationals_good_america.php 
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