MR. BUFFETT, YOU HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO:

Moguls Revolt Against Obama: At last week’s Sun Valley summit of media titans, the mood was dour, the forecast anxious. Peter Lauria on how America’s moguls are growing increasingly skeptical about the president. (Peter Lauria, 7/13/10, Daily Beast)

The White House’s charm offensive toward the business community could have used a representative in Sun Valley last week. While President Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner all talked up the economy and the positive impact of the administration’s policies in interviews last week, their words were viewed suspiciously by the titans of media, technology, and finance assembled for Allen & Co.’s annual conference in the sleepy resort town nestled in the crevices of Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains. The most generous comment about the current state of the economy came from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who serves as an adviser to the president on science and technology, and even then the best he could muster was that, “Everybody is in a sort of funk.”

In both on- and off-the-record conversations with The Daily Beast, many of the other moguls in attendance—who collectively control hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, of the country’s gross domestic product—were less diplomatic, expressing serious concern about the administration’s motives and openly worrying that its policies will cause sustained damage not just to their consumer-facing businesses, but also to the long-term health of the country. [...]

Added John Hendricks, founder of Discovery Communications: “Government needs to focus on how to incentivize companies because we in business are the ones who create jobs. I’d like to see them come around and be more proactive about free enterprise and this wonderful system we have.”

The guy was supposed to be smarter than a million Isaac Newton's but he can't figure out basic economics?

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 13, 2010 11:16 AM