Rarely if ever have we had a president this contemptuous or hostile toward wealth creators, businesses and markets. The Dow is a “poll.” He rips bank executives in his joint address to congress. His agenda is stuffed with stifling regulation (cap and trade), new taxes, and executive pay limits. In totality, it’s a rather fulsome assault on those who we in large part rely on to fuel the recovery.
And Charlie Gasparino tells us the feeling is mutual:
Here’s how one top Wall Street exec, who has tried passing along ideas to the Obama team, put it: “Geithner thinks he’s in charge, but he has no staff to get anything done. Summers sits there and likes to remind everyone he’s in charge – and Volcker, probably the only adult in the room, has his nose out of joint because no one is listening to him.”
[. . .]
To be sure, the tax hikes of the early Clinton years slowed down the economy – but economic czar Bob Rubin made sure they went for deficit-reduction. The Obama budget and the so-called stimulus package don’t just expand the deficit (as we should during a downturn), they do so in the most irresponsible ways, with pork and programs pulled from old liberal wish lists.
On top of that, we get fresh threats of higher taxes on the most productive people in the country and a bank bailout that remains a mystery. Plus policy measures that contradict each other – like vows to unclog the banking system of toxic mortgage debt, along with a mortgage “cram down” that would make that debt more toxic.
It all has Wall Street’s collective head spinning – and Obama’s most ardent financial-industry fans deserting him.
This does not bode well for either the economy or the president’s political fortunes. The class warfare, anti-business venom coming from the administration is a far cry from his campaign rhetoric which called for national unity and an end to the demonization of political opponents. And that’s the rub: Obama views business as “opponents,” and its spokespeople ( e.g. Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli) as political enemies to be dismissed or bullied. What an extraordinary and counterproductive approach for a president whose main task is our economic revival.
