we'll hear from siemens corporation see grow eric spiegel -- ceo eric spiegel and pollster joel benenson. from the u.s. conference of mayors' winter meeting, this is an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] >> yeah, absolutely. okay. can i have your attention, please? i just want to remind everyone that the discussion about this winter meeting, um, doesn't exactly happen in this room, but it also happens online. so i invite you all when tweeting to use our hash tag, uscm winter, when posting tweets. it's a great way to see what others are saying and to bring the conversation beyond capitol hill to the hotel. also we are asking mayors to sit down with our film crew for a few minutes during this meeting to talk about what happens when we invest in cities, the impact of congressional budget cuts and the measures you have taken to help create jobs. we want to share them later, your answers, via facebook, twitter and youtube, and as we lead up into the president's state of the union and the release of the budget. the filming for this initiative will be going on during our meeting hours i

so on the panel we have eric stoutland -- eric spiegel. you heard from him briefly today and i asked him to say something more. brian krzanich, intel, and incredible u.s. company. i'm going to ask him to say a little more. atlanta, home to 14 fortune 500 companies which has been particularly strong also tracking investments. atlanta and that area and there were around the world, he kicked off the panels this morning. had a little more time this morning but -- has done to make all of us think harder about this and it's been very helpful. if i could ask you to kick off and i said to you what i would like you to do please, is to expand on what you said and i want to put at least part of what you addressed, part of your experience, things that we could be doing better, significantly better across the united states in making it possible for you speedily to make the investments you would like to make here and are there some obstacles, things that seem to you frustrating, costly and so on that we ought to know about to see if we can help them. >>

my name is eric spiegel.m the ceo of siemens in the u.s., one of the world's largest engineering and technology companies. we operate in 190 companies, well over $100 billion in sales. the u.s. is our largest market, with sales in the $25 billion. 65,000 employees here, 130 manufacturing facilities. if you go back in time, siemens has been in the u.s. over 100 years, and we've always manufactured and done business in the u.s. but we also used to import a lot of our products from europe, primarily from germany but also other countries. that has changed in the last couple of years. i will give you examples of what we've been talking about with opportunities and issues we have encountered. last november we opened a gas turbine plant in charlotte, the largest in north america. we invested several hundred million dollars and created about 1000 new jobs in charlotte. the reason for charlotte is we got a tremendous amount of help from the state of north carolina at also from various federal agencies in making that h

so on the panel we have eric spiegel. you heard from him to briefly this point and ask him to say something more. brian krzanich of intel, incredible u.s. company. you know that. i'm going to ask him to say a little more. kasim reed, the mayor of atlanta, home to 14 fortune 500 companies which has been particularly strong also in attracting investment into atlanta from around the world and hal again, who kicked off the panel display. had a little more time this morning, but work for the boston consulting group has done to make all of us think harder about this has been very helpful. so eric, if i could ask you to kick off, and they say to you what i would like you to do, please, is to expand on what you said. and i want to put at least as part of what you addressed is are the things injury experience that we could be doing better, significantly better, across the united states in making it possible for you speedily to make the investments you would like to make here? and are there some obstacles, things that seem to you f

you know, if we're going to create the high-tech jobs that eric spiegel was talking about a minute ago that are also outline inside a great piece in the atlantic this month on the nature of our high-tech labor force and why there are high-tech jobs that eric said are going to have to be done in the unite, we are going to have to change this attitude again, we're going to have to keep investing money in colleges, not cutting student loan programs, adding to it. we're going to have to do a better job with education and invest not just to revent layoffs, but to address some of the issues that mayor villaraigosa talked about. .. >> i don't mean that justice this week don't want to be small businesspeople although i was one before i had this business. i was a beer distributor in crown heights in brooklyn. but americans, this was our strength. we always believed that all had to do was to work hard, get my job well, showed up, unicode progress a little bit, that i could get ahead in this world. and that number has declined. it was 73% in set timber 2000. by march 2006, it was 64%. now it's at