Icahn Blasts Barack

Carl Icahn’s political contributions have spanned the ideological spectrum, having supported both national parties and such diverse candidates as George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Liddy Dole and Bill Bradley. But it doesn’t look like Barack Obama should be expecting a check anytime soon, given Icahn’s comments yesterday at the Ira W. Sohn Investment Research Conference.

According to DealScape, Icahn devoted just a fraction of his 15 minutes to the Yahoo proxy fight (which is what everyone wanted to hear about). He then went on to slam to presumptive Democratic nominee, saying: “Obama doesn’t understand the economy… I personally think he would be a terrible president.” He added that a Democratic executive and legislature would combine to significantly increase spending, which would fuel inflation.

Not quite sure why it would be so different from the free-spending years under doubled-branched GOP control (2000-2006), but apparently Carl believes that (R)Spend=good, while (D)spend=Bad.

I did briefly ask Icahn about the presidential race during our conversation at Buyouts East in March. He said that Republicans are generally better for business than are Democrats, but he didn’t seem terribly passionate about it. Maybe he still thought Hillary was going to be on the November ballot…