It’s gracious — somewhat, I guess — of billionaire private equity honcho Stephen Schwarzman to say he’s sorry for describing President Obama’s business tax policies as “a war … like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” as quoted in a New York Post story (hat tip to Paul Caron’s TaxProf blog). It’s just not good enough, though, on three counts:

First, describing such a highly offensive statement as an “inappropriate analogy” is pathetically feeble. “Inappropriate” is how you describe the too-tight jeans your friend wore to a formal. “Insensitive” is the minimum I’ll accept here. “Idiotic” would be better.

Second, Schwarzman is a serial offender in the insensitivity department; a couple of years ago, he described his company’s attempt to buy a mortgage bank in the middle of the subprime crisis as “the equivalent of being a noodle salesman in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb went off.” He apologized then, too.

Third, Schwartzman might be well advised to steer clear of commenting on tax policy altogether, given that, as I noted here, there’s a good argument that his industry wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for what Josh Kosman describes as a “giant tax loophole” — namely, interest tax deductibility. ###