Scuttlebutt from Obama's War (Against Business) Room

Good get together last night with some buds, one of whom related a story to me that underscores what I've been saying all along here. The story is about the CEO of one of the largest companies in the country - a huge company that employs hundreds of thousands of workers and spends tens of billions of dollars in investment capex. Anyway, this company naturally has a new head regulator since Obama came on board. The new head regulator has decided to push ahead with a new controversial policy that amounts to stealing the property of this large company, and chose to bypass the traditional policy of allowing industry participants a public comment period. In short, thew new guy is embarking on handing down a regulatory dictat that will eviserate billions of dollars of investment that this large company, and others in the industry have already spent. So, the regulator and the CEO have a very uncivil discussion about it and the regulator hangs up on the CEO. So, some time after the CEO gets to chat with David Axelrod, who apparently is pretty much the Obama economic team, and the CEO makes a mild accusation that the Obama administration is not friendly to business. Axelrod is perplexed, he can't understand how or why the Obama administration has picked up a reputation for being unfriendly to business, causing the CEO to burst out laughing.

Couple points here. Axelrod isn't stupid, why would he try to maintain a fiction in a private conversation? Does he really believe that this administration's policies are friendly to business? Second, shouldn't a savvy political operator know that a man who controls tens of billions of dollars in spending and hundreds of thousands of jobs is someone to work with, not repel? Given today's unemployment numbers, my theory of the existence of job market vigilantes is looking spot on. These companies have very long time horizons, they can afford to sit on their cash and wait Obama out, which they are doing. There is no conceivable way that the Obama political team doesn't know this. Thus the logical conclusion is they don't care. They think that they can accomplish what they want - a fundamental reordering of the economy through cap and trade, healthcare nationalization, regulatory overhaul, and card check - before anyone notices or before any poo hits the fan in terms of economic consequences. It's a gamble, a big brash cynical gamble. It's also dishonest, and I would even argue treasonous. It is only in this context that one can rejoice in the latest dismal unemployment numbers. Obama owns the jobless figures and every bad turn harms his political capital and ability to achieve his aims. I lament that so many are out of work, but this is the price we pay for our self-indulgent fantasies about Obama, liberal Democrats, government power, free lunches, and anti-capitalist feel-good utopian pap.