Jack Welch: Obama is anti-business

which is ironic, since with a little help and encouragement, business could lead the economy back, helping the administration.

[rquoter]Obama Administration Is 'Anti-Business': Jack Welch

CNBC.com
| 23 Sep 2010 | 09:39 AM ET
High unemployment may last for a long time because of the sluggish economy, bad politics and advances in technology, Jack Welch, author of "Straight from the Gut," told CNBC Thursday.

President Barack Obama's administration has an "anti-business" bias which manifests itself through intimidation, trade, taxes and regulation, Welch also said.

"Our businesses across the board look like 1.5-2 percent gross domestic product (advance) businesses," he said.

"The facts are in most businesses there's 20 to 25 percent excess capacity that they can fill in without adding any new people," Welch added.

Technology, which is improving business "exponentially", is also a factor in not adding jobs.

The government should make it easier for companies to invest and expand but instead they are hampering business, according to Welch.

"I still maintain that the economy's been terrible and they have not done things to move the economy forward," he said.

"He's there a month and he vilifies Las Vegas… he kills the hotel business," Welch said.

Soon after he came into office, Obama slammed companies that benefitted from taxpayer money for taking corporate trips to Las Vegas.

Businesspeople said tourism in Nevada took a hit partly because companies decided to cancel trips to Las Vegas following his comment.

"You get all these little things that have consequences beyond 'we can't have corporate jets and fat cats going to Las Vegas,'" Welch said.

If Republicans win in the mid-term November elections it would be better for the economy because it generally is better if the president is of one political color and Congress of another, he added.

"President Bush misbehaved when he had all his boys in the House and the Senate. These guys don't know how to behave," Welch said.

Clinton "was good when he had Newt Gingrich being a pain in the neck at his side." The Obama administration has done some "nice things in education," he said, "but they weren't focused on economy and jobs."

The recession caused many projects to be put on hold and led to a change in business habits, while policies have "stuck the gears" of business, Welch said.

To encourage the business sector, the government could "make heroes out of entrepreneurs… they can celebrate business," according to Welch.

Some countries in Europe don't celebrate their entrepreneurs, "most people don't want to be these people," he said.

"We have a culture that says 'I want to make a lot of money, I want to make good with my money'… that's a hero, not a bum," Welch explained.

Another example of Obama's anti-business stance is the fact that in the auto bailout, bondholders were "smashed to pieces" and "were called speculators," he said.

BP , which was "vilified" for the blown-up well in the Gulf of Mexico was yet another example, as is the fact that the insurance industry "gets killed" in the health reform, Welch added.

Earlier in the year, President Obama "ridiculed the Supreme Court in front of the nation" for its decision to remove limits on companies' political donations, according to Welch.

In January when the decision was issued Obama said that "the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics."

Welch also criticized Obama's policy on cancelling the foreign tax credit relief, saying that companies that reinvest their earnings abroad should not be forced to pay tax on that money because they use it to compete in the global economy.

"Stop it, you can't go industry by industry… through intimidation, business by business by business," Welch said.[/rquoter]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39321858/

 

it's not just Jack that thinks Obama is anti-business.

[rquoter]Barack Obama and business
The wages of negligence
The president has gained a reputation for being hostile to business. He needs to change it
Sep 23rd 2010

WINSTON CHURCHILL once moaned about the long, dishonourable tradition in politics that sees commerce as a cow to be milked or a dangerous tiger to be shot. Businesses are the generators of the wealth on which incomes, taxation and all else depends; “the strong horse that pulls the whole cart”, as Churchill put it. No sane leader of a country would want businesspeople to think that he was against them, especially at a time when confidence is essential for the recovery.

From this perspective, Barack Obama already has a lot to answer for. A president who does so little to counter the idea that he dislikes business is, self-evidently, a worryingly negligent chief executive. No matter that other Western politicians have publicly played with populism more dangerously, from France’s “laissez-faire is dead” president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to Britain’s “capitalism kills competition” business secretary, Vince Cable (see article); no matter that talk on the American right about Mr Obama being a socialist is rot; no matter that Wall Street’s woes are largely of its own making. The evidence that American business thinks the president does not understand Main Street is mounting (see article).

A Bloomberg survey this week found that three-quarters of American investors believe he is against business. The bedrock of the tea-party movement is angry small-business owners. The Economist has lost count of the number of prominent chief executives, many of them Democrats, who complain privately that the president does not understand their trade—that he treats them merely as adornments at photocalls and uses teleprompters to talk to them; that he shows scant interest in their views on which tax cuts would persuade them to hire people; that his team is woefully short of anyone who has had to meet a payroll (there are fewer businesspeople in this White House than in any recent administration); and that regulatory uncertainty is hampering their willingness to invest.

Ignorant but not antagonistic

That Mr Obama has let it reach this stage is a worry. But negligence is not the same as opposition. True, he has some rhetorical form as an anti-business figure—unlike the previous Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton, who could comfortably talk the talk of business. Mr Obama’s life story, as depicted in his autobiography and on the campaign, was one of a man once mired in the sinful private sector (at a company subsequently bought by The Economist), who redeemed himself only by becoming a community organiser; his wife had a similar trajectory. There are the endless digs at Wall Street and Big Pharma, not to mention the beating up of BP. He remains a supporter of “card check”, which would dispense with the need for secret ballots in establishing a trade union. His legislative agenda has centred on helping poorer individuals (the health-care bill, part of the stimulus bill) or reining in banks (the financial-reform bill). The only businesses he has rescued are the huge union-dominated General Motors and Chrysler.

Against this, it could have been much worse, especially given the opprobrium that now dogs Wall Street. A president who truly wanted to wage war on business would have hung onto GM, not rushed to return it to the private sector. Card check has not been pushed. The finance bill, though bureaucratic, is not a Wall Street killer. With the exception of a China-bashing tyre tariff and a retreat on Mexican trucks, Mr Obama has eschewed protectionism. A lot of government cash has flowed to businesses, not least through the stimulus package. And above all his policies have helped pull the economy out of recession.

So what should he do? The same leftist advisers who have led Mr Obama into his “anti-business” hole are doubtless telling him that it is just a matter of public relations: have a few tycoons to stay in the Lincoln bedroom; celebrate Main Street’s successes, rather than just whining about bonuses; perhaps invite a chief executive to replace Larry Summers, the academic who announced this week that he was standing down as the president’s main economic adviser. Well, maybe. But once again this is advice from people who have never run a business. The main thing that is hurting business is uncertainty.

Mr Obama was right to tackle big subjects like health care and Wall Street, but too often the details were left to others. Why, for instance, should a small American firm hire more people when it still does not know the regulations on health care, especially when going above 50 workers will make it liable to insurance premiums or fines? Fiscal policy is even more uncertain, thanks to Mr Obama’s refusal to produce a credible plan to rein in the deficit. Why should any entrepreneur plough money into a new factory when he has no idea what taxes he will eventually be asked to pay? These are questions that business needs answering in a businesslike way—and so does America. Otherwise the horse will not pull the cart.[/rquoter]