Last year Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman got into trouble for comparing the US government's tax plans for private equity to the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and now restaurant owner Mario Batali faces a backlash for comparing his high-paying Wall Street clientele to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Yesterday Forbes reported that at a Time magazine Person of the Year debate, Batali said: "I would have to say that who has had the largest effect on the whole planet without us really paying attention across the board and everywhere is the entire banking industry and their disregard for the people that they're supposed to be working for….So the ways the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys…" [http://onforb.es/ue9lhS]