Keller @ Large: The Key Role Of Big Business

BOSTON (CBS) - In a commentary Thursday on the Panama Papers and what they expose about financial malfeasance, we slammed the culpable members of the corporate sector for their greed and amorality.

Today, it seems only fair to give the other side a hearing, in the form of a scathing column by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, responding to comments by Bernie Sanders that in their greed, companies like GE are "destroying the moral fabric" of America by shutting down US plants, sending jobs overseas, and avoiding taxes.

Immelt cries foul, noting that GE pays billions in taxes, sells more than $20 billion annually in US goods to foreign markets, and sustains 125,000 American jobs. He roasts Sanders for never visiting the GE aviation factory in Rutland, Vermont, the senator's home state.

And while Sanders' critique has traction when he talks about the slick Wall Street operators who make money by playing with money, Immelt notes that GE actually does make useful stuff.

"We create wealth and jobs, instead of just calling for them in speeches," he writes. "We take risks, invest, innovate and produce."

This is why a blue-collar Democrat like Boston Mayor Marty Walsh was so eager to coax GE into moving their corporate headquarters here. He knows how jobs and wealth are created and the key role business – yes, even big business – plays in that process.

Sanders is right to be incensed by the greed-crazed behavior spelled out in the Panama Papers.

But his refusal to acknowledge how the world works amounts to just baby talk.

Listen to Jon's commentary: