Anti-Business? Didn't I Just Bail You People Out?

President Obama says anyone calling him “anti-business” has an awfully short memory. “It was just three or four months ago when, at great political expense, we yanked them out of the fire,” he tells BusinessWeek in a lengthy interview. And of Chrysler and General Motors bondholders, “They had no problem with government intervention if it was helping them”—only, when Obama called for sacrifice, to plead, “Well, a contract’s a contract.”

Obama argued that almost all the policies he’s enacted so far have been pro-business. “This has more to do with people buying into stereotypes about Democratic presidents,” he says. To tax griping, he replies, “We are now at the lowest tax rates for high-income individuals that we’ve had—what?—since 1979? For us to return to some semblance of balance is hardly radical.”