Newt retracted his statement today and said he went over the line. In addition, I supported Newt before and after his Bain attacks. That said...
Too many wannabe Capitalistas here at FR and elsewhere, who adamantly defend this kind of shuck and jive financial paper shuffling as exemplary acts of free-market enterprise.
What would you call it? What would you do otherwise? Perhaps some wise government bureaucrat could decide what ailing companies should succeed and which should fail. Let me make this clear, even if Bain was straight up selfish and squeezed every last drop of life out of dying companies, it was part of the capitalist system. An absence of vultures does not resurrect road kill. This whole leftist populist socialist attack to Romney's left is disgusting.
Newt retracted his statement today and said he went over the line. In addition, I supported Newt before and after his Bain attacks. That said...
No he didn't—that was a Politico misconstrual.
What would you call it?
Calling it corporatism is a fine moniker to me, for distinguishing it from capitalism proper (or my preferred choice word,
entrepreneurialism—which I think is a far better term for encompassing free-market activity).
I might be sounding terribly philosophical here, but I don't think you should decontextualize an activity from the legal conditions under which it occurs. That is to say, just because what Bain Capital was doing was ostensibly
legal doesn't mean everything Bain Capital was doing is something we should look to as a sound business practice, nor necessarily something that's an economically rational expression of capitalism (see
moral hazard).
What would you do otherwise? Perhaps some wise government bureaucrat could decide what ailing companies should succeed and which should fail.
Of course not—scrutinizing a business model doesn't imply that one endorses government intervention. For the record, I'm very much a fan of Austrian Economics, so government intervention is not something I at all advocate.
Let me make this clear, even if Bain was straight up selfish and squeezed every last drop of life out of dying companies, it was part of the capitalist system.
The problem with your stance here, is that if you're going to make this kind of concerted defense of 'capitalism', it's important to acknowledge that the government is
already implicitly involved in the process we're talking about—via how bankruptcy and corporate laws are structured and what not—which indirectly has major consequences on how winners and losers get decided. Which makes it vital to question how these laws are written, insofar as how they influence the rational behavior of agents in an
ostensibly capitalist, free-market society. And ask yourself whether the laws provide the right kinds of accountability, etc. to encourage rational economic decision-making with optimal
time-preference valuation, etc.
An absence of vultures does not resurrect road kill.
I don't think anybody is making such claims. At least, I haven't seen them.
This whole leftist populist socialist attack to Romney's left is disgusting.
And I think you're misinterpreting the nature of the arguments being made against Bain Capital.