Symantec’s John Thompson to be Commerce Secretary?

Symantec’s John Thompson, along with future CEO of Symantec, Enrique Salem, recently told the corporate employees during an all hands meeting 4 days before the election in November, that they were going to fire 4.5% of the workforce.  Other Antivirus companies were doing fine.  Only Symantec was reporting that they were suffering from the economic downturn.  But they spun it as a good thing to happen. The reason it was a good thing is because they figured that Obama would bring new road building projects and guys that worked jackhammers were Symantec’s target customers.  Yeah, they really said that.

Now CNET is reporting what I had speculated months ago–  John Thompson is likely going to be the secretary of commerce under Barack Obama.

John Thompson, outgoing chief executive of security company Symantec, is being considered for the post of secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“He (Thompson) is the leading candidate,” Reuters quoted an unidentified senior Democratic source as saying. “He is still being vetted.”

Thompson, who announced in November that he would step down in April, held several fund-raisers for Obama at his Silicon Valley home.

“John has always kept his political activities personal in nature and separate from him activities as head of Symantec,” a Symantec spokesman said in an e-mail. “He hasn’t commented in the past and hasn’t been making himself available this time around, either.”

Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council said, “His work on diversifying the corporate ranks bodes well for his willingness to think broadly about advancing our competitiveness on a global basis.”

Ah, he is experienced in recognizing all of the different races, genders and sexual deviants and putting them in positions of power.  How else does one “diversify corporate ranks,” after all?

If Thompson gets the secretary nod, Canada better watch out.  They will be acquired in a takeover, all of its wealth reported as current US income in order to bolster market share, but a year later everyone will be fired and replaced with people from India.

Thanks to Juan for the story.