"Phui.  That is flummery."  That's what Rex Stout once had Nero Wolfe interject. 

Well, now Marc Thiesen has so said to the Obama Camp regarding its campaign against "Private Equity" and Governor Romney in his excellent Washington Post article.

Their thesis (being a muddled bit along the lines of: "Profit for profit's sake is not what investing should be about") is deftly countered by Mr. Thiesen's disquisition on "Public Equity" best summarized as:

After all, if Romney's record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama's record in public equity - and that record is not pretty.

He continues:

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters - leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions.

He then recounts the many stumbles, bumbles, and failures produced by the "Public Equity Investment" geniuses.

And about their beneficiaries:

Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding "based solely on their merits." But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, "Throw Them All Out," fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department's grants and loans went to "individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama's National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party." Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it's not the president's job "to make a lot of money for investors." Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.

As is often said, read it all and weep.

And read Ed Morrissey's take on the subject in his Oamateurism of the Day:

Allahpundit already started off the fun with Barack Obama's newest White House website, Money As You Grow, which dispenses sage advice ... most of which Obama himself ignores when handling our money.  AP took two of the better entries in the series in his post last night, but there are plenty more to ridicule within this gold mine of sanctimonious hypocrisy.

Let us devoutly hope that the expression "Public Equity" is inserted in every article and interview and commercial on the subject of Romney's investment objectives and their results and used to enlighten the electorate on his opponent's endeavors at investing.

Lots of sad reading there, too.

atrribution corrected from Washington Examine to Washington Post.

The author is a retired businessman with marketing experience in the Hospitality Industry