And not for the first time, they’re making him look like a buffoon.
Schwarzman, the $3 billion man who runs Blackstone , lashed out at the White House last month over efforts to raise taxes on private equity firms, Jonathan Alter reports.
“It’s a war,” Schwarzman said at a board meeting of an unnamed nonprofit firm. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
PEHub’s Dan Primack, soon to join us at Fortune, notes that a tax increase for rich guys is actually not all that much like an invasion that killed tens of thousands and led to years of atrocities.
“I could go into all the reasons why it’s different, but that would be like explaining why a birch tree is different than a water buffalo,” he writes. “Schwarzman is as tone deaf on these issues as are many of the people he’s criticizing.”
But then, Schwarzman has never been known for his sensitivity. There is no forgetting his $3 million 60th birthday party. And then there was the line he gave the New Yorker in 2008 – a year in which his $702 million paycheck made him the highest-paid CEO in America.
“I don’t feel like a wealthy person,” he said. Nor, obviously, a wise one.