With a friend like Obama in the White House, who needs enemy? That's what lots of hotel employees in Las Vegas must be asking these days according to Loews Corp CEO Jim Tisch. He didn't mince words with Bloomberg, calling Obama's outbursts against travel and lodging the "death knell" for the industry.

It's easy for the politician to get the sound bite. What they are doing with those sound bites is putting maids and bellmen out of work."

Bloomberg goes on to report that in a bizarre twist Obama's bank bashing has also sent key employee's fleeing AIG to Loews.

President Barack Obama last year said companies receiving aid should curtail travel and pay. "You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you've paid taxpayers back," Obama said at a town hall meeting in February 2009. "You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime."

"Last time I looked, we don't have indentured servitude in the United States," he said. "The situation is such that the good people have every incentive to leave to maximize their income."

Tisch joined billionaire Warren Buffett in opposing the Obama administration's proposed fee on lenders to repay bailout funds. He said it is unfair to penalize financial firms when regulators, mortgage brokers and borrowers contributed to the recession as well.

"It sounds good when you say it fast," Tisch said. "To take out this retribution solely on the banks makes sense from the populist politician's perspective but is not necessarily good economic policy. If they put this tax in place, it will simply make it more expensive for people to borrow money because banks are in the business of earning a rate of return on their capital."

Mr. Tish's bluntness is as accurate as Mr. Obama's rhetoric is dangerous.

Bill Weckesser

E. Lansing, MI