POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

EPIC RANT: O!ministration is greatest impediment to businesses creating jobs

Delivered by hotelier Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, in an earnings report conference call conducted this week.  During the call, where the questions varied from inside-baseball share price and profit matter to the overall outlook for the market's his company has properties in, Mr. Wynn called out the Obama administration for being, "The Greatest Wet Blanket To Business And Job Creation In My Lifetime".  Here's a taste from the transcript:

I believe in Las Vegas, I think its best days are ahead of it, but I'm afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States.  You watch television and see what's going on on this this debt ceiling issue.  And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President, and nothing will get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress.  But everybody is so political, so focused on holding their job for the next year, that the discussion in Washington is nauseating.

And I'm saying it bluntly that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime.  And I can prove it and I could spend the  next three hours giving you examples of all of us in this marketplace that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our health care costs escalate. Regulations coming from left and right.  A President that seems, you know -- that keeps using that word redistribution.

Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they're frightened of this administration.  And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.  You bet. And until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change.

And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it, are going to sit in fear of the President.  And you know, a lot of people don't want to say that.  They say oh, God, don't be attacking Obama.  Well, this is Obama's deal.  And it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe's ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, they're holding too much money.  You know, we haven't heard that kind of money except from pure socialists.

Everybody is afraid of the government.  And there's no need -- there's no need, you know, soft pedaling it.  It's the truth.  It is the truth.  And that's true of Democratic businessmen, and Republican businessmen, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid, I support Democrats and Republicans, and I'm telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States.  And until he's gone, everybody is going to be sitting on their thumbs.

[emphasis-ed]

Wow...Pretty brutal stuff, eh?  Brutally honest, that is... The full transcript is posted at Seeking Alpha.  And RCP has audio of the rant posted as well, if you'd prefer to get the full flavor that his tone of voice imparts to the verbiage.

Oh, and as an aside, when Wynn compares the administration to straight up socialists he's speaking from experience; in the call he mentions that it's his companies 5th year operating a casino in Macau; the property with the greatest growth prospects in his organization right now.  For the geographically challenged among us, Macau is located in Communist China.

Although a long outspoken critic of the administration's regulatory policies and general business unfriendliness, it's nothing new. Other prominent businessmen such as Mort Zuckerman, no wingnut by any stretch of the imagination, has made many similar points, albeit couched in less strident language, for some time.  Indeed, Mr. Obama's class warfare schtick seems to be wearing a bit thin on even his old pal Warren Buffet.

It's painfully clear to all but the most partisan kool-aid drinkers that this administration's economic initiatives have failed miserably, as many knew they would being mere re-runs of past failed progressive policy prescriptions.  And the breadth and magnitude of this failure really calls into question whether the President want the economy to recover, or would prefer the crisis environment, such being more conducive to implementing his radical transformative agenda under the guise of it being urgently necessary for the good of our nation.  Given that he's clearly pursuing such a strategy in the current debt talks, it's getting increasingly more difficult to extend him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he has nothing but good intent, with respect to his larger social and economic agenda.

[Cross posted at The Conservatory]

Rocketman