Proven: Obama Is “Not” AntiBusiness

Ladies and gentlemen, you will be relieved to hear that Barack Obama is not anti-business. Oh, thank goodness. I was getting worried. Who has proven this, you ask? Why, The Economist that’s who! Indeed, it looked at all of the whining allegations against Obama and it dismissed them all. Observe. . .

In the past several weeks, the business community has waged an unseemly campaign against Obama. For example, Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon, “accused the president of creating ‘an increasingly hostile environment for investing and job creation’,” and the Chamber of Commerce complains that Obama “vilifies industries.”

But they probably never supported him.

Of course, GE CEO Jeff Immelt did. He’s a big-business socialist hack who pimped hard for Obama. He now says this administration “is not in sync with entrepreneurs.” The Business Roundtable, a crony capitalist group, loves ObamaCare, but they just published a 49-page list of Obama policies that inhibit economic growth. And let us not forget evil hedge fund crook Dan Loeb, an Obama donor and former classmate of Obama’s, who is circulating a letter accusing Obama of undermining free-market capitalism and the rule of law.

But do they have a case? Heck no, says The Economist. Here’s why:

First, Obama always said he favors a “mixed capitalist economy.” Thus, The Economist says, it’s not valid to argue that he’s anti-business when he has never hidden this fact before. Apparently, logic escapes The Economist.

Secondly, corporate America should really be upset at Bush. The incursion in the financial industry and the recession both began under Bush. Therefore, the blame rightly lies with Bush. Forget that Obama had two years to fix this (and the Democrats had six) and that he spent trillions of dollars. . . all of which clearly appears to have been wasted.

Third, corporate America deserves the blame itself! After all, it was evil “corporate America, in the shape of Wall Street banks, that was largely to blame for the depth of the recession.” Finger pointing. . . the answer of a loser bereft of ideas, e.g. The Economist. Of course, The Economist concedes, Obama didn’t have to vilify business so much, but “some shame was surely in order.” Wow, so demonizing is now good economic policy?

Fourth, it’s not like Obama ignores business. He did make some vague promises in his State of the Union. . . forget that he hasn’t kept them. He did pledge to return GM and Chrysler to private ownership “quickly” . . . forget that this won’t happen for decades. And he did create a committee “to propose ideas for promoting more innovation.” One single committee? Oh, and forget that one committee member says “the administration is doing more talking than listening, and several of us are already worried we’ve been suckered into a PR exercise.”

Fifth, business is upset about “uncertainty,” but it’s not Obama’s fault. For example, they asked him to “kill some of the more alarming reform proposals” in financial reform. He did that by “punting the proposals on to regulators.” So it’s not fair to blame him for creating uncertainty because business itself asked for it. Of course, this shows that The Economist doesn’t understand our government because Obama had no power to do this. Congress passed financial reform, which was always headed to the regulators. All Obama did was sign the reform and the rest happened automatically. Moreover, it’s illogical to say Obama can’t be blamed. They wanted parts of the bill killed. Obama didn’t do that. Instead, he left those parts in and just put the issue off by letting the regulators handle it. Thus, not only did he not kill the provisions, he injected uncertainty.

Continuing with uncertainty, The Economist claims he can’t be blamed for uncertainty in fuel prices because Republicans stopped cap and trade, which is a nonsensical argument. Cap and trade was not going to reduce fuel costs or make the commodities market less uncertain. Moreover, Obama can be blamed for uncertainty if he keeps saying that he’s going to keep trying to do bad things.

And The Economist claims business can’t blame him for the uncertainty about whether or not the Bush tax cuts will expire because they’re only returning to the levels they were at under Clinton, “which was hardly a terrible for business.” Which is another nonsensical argument that ignores that Obama’s dithering is causing the uncertainty. Do it or don’t, but don’t drag the decision out for two years.

Sixth, Obama can’t be blamed for the deficit because of the “nasty, mostly inherited fiscal problem.” And this requires taxes to fix, so business should just shut up. Of course, The Economist ignores that the deficit went from $200 billion to $400 billion under Bush to $1.3 trillion under Obama. That’s on Obama.

Seventh, business complains about ObamaCare, but they favored reform, so again just shut up you whiners. Think about this one. According to The Economist, if you’ve ever advocated fixing something, then you can’t complain about anyone else’s solution. Ridiculous.

Eighth, counterattack: the only reason business is really complaining about Obama is “their failure to create jobs in America coincides with earning huge profits and sitting on record amounts of cash.” Ah hah! Villains! Of course, this is ridiculous. They don’t owe anyone a job, and the fact that they could spend their profits creating jobs doesn’t mean they should or that it’s a good idea. Nor does it mean that their concerns are in any way invalid. Moreover, it’s asinine to attack the accusers when you’re supposed to be providing an analysis of Obama’s policies. This is called blaming the victim and it’s something liberals are very good at. . . and even better at whining about.

The Economist is a great source of amusement these days, but don’t take anything they say seriously: their analysis is biased, weak, illogical and ignorant of economic principles, and their facts are generally shaded and selectively incomplete. Sad.