Obama Tells BW He's Not Antibusiness

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And so if you think about the problem that we're now trying to solve, we've stopped the bleeding, the economy is stabilized. There's this huge deleveraging taking place, both at the consumer level and among businesses, and, ultimately, government's going to have to do the same thing. We're not going to be able to drive the next big stretch of economic growth through debt.

So what is that model of a post-bubble economy? What we've tried to say is that there are some foundations, some pillars that have to be in place in order for that next round of growth to take off. This is not to pick winners and losers and be able to predict exactly, in detail, which companies are going to be successful and which aren't. This is always the straw man that gets put up there when you hear about government being involved in the economy. That's not what we're talking about.

[What we're saying] matches up almost perfectly with what those CEOs were saying: Can we introduce the same sort of productivity in the health-care industry, which we know is going to be a growing sector because of the aging population? Can we use the need to transition our energy economy in such a way that it ends up being a huge engine for economic growth? Can we revamp our education system so that it's producing the kind of workers we need? And then can we make government sufficiently efficient so that it not only is delivering good services for taxpayer dollars but also regains credibility? Because in the 21st century economy, a lean, mean, but effective government is going to be important. And we need to get beyond this notion that somehow government is always just the problem.

And so I actually think that some of these conversations that I have with corporate leaders, as well as with small business leaders, there's a real recognition of, rather than be bogged down in the old ideological debates, the whole question is how do we create a smarter economy? And if we don't do that, then we're going to be limping along with unsatisfactory growth rates for a pretty long period of time.

A lot of business leaders consider you to be antibusiness. I was struck when I attended the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival. [Council of Economic Advisers member] Austan Goolsbee was speaking, and he hit a fairly hostile audience. These are wealthy, fairly progressive older people who had tended to support you, but they seemed very upset about corporate taxes, individual taxes, card check, all sorts of things you're doing that they perceived as not helpful to them. What can you say to those people?

Let's look at the record. I've been in office six months. So far my only tax policy has been to cut taxes for 95% of working people. I haven't signed a bill that's raised taxes yet. To the extent that we have put in place policies, they've all been directed at helping businesses. A number of those who think we're antibusiness seem to forget that it was just three or four months ago when, at great political expense, we yanked them out of the fire. And they still—at least if they're in the financial sector—are enjoying a whole bunch of government guarantees that are propping up their business models. So it's hard for me not to be a little skeptical when I hear that somehow we've been antibusiness.

But you're aware of that perception?

Well, here's what I think. To the extent that I can identify any aspects of this that make any sense, one is that, at the height of the AIG (AIG) debacle, I used pretty tough language in terms of folks paying themselves bonuses at a time when they were given big taxpayer bailouts. I continue to believe—and this is not antibusiness, this is common sense—that if you've presided over an enormous meltdown that has resulted in about $10 trillion worth of wealth being lost, that you might want to be a little self-reflective and perhaps change your business goal. And when I see Wall Street not doing that, it tells me not only that they have forgotten the recent past, but that they are putting the country's economy at further risk. One of the things I'm worried about is, having had to step in in extraordinary ways, we now have even more potential for moral hazard, where financial institutions think to themselves, "We can continue to take extraordinary risks and pay ourselves extraordinarily high salaries or bonuses because we know that we are too big to fail." I think that's dangerous for the economy and for business. And so that would be one example.

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