Posted on 01/13/2012 1:16:41 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Mitt Romney has been quick to justify his record of laying-off workers and closing plants as CEO of Bain Capital by wrapping himself in the “creative destruction” of free market capitalism But Romney’s idea of capitalism is that you can fire workers and strip companies on the way up, and then if you are big and influential enough, demand taxpaying workers bail you out on the way down.
While Romney’s supporters are putting up a heavy smoke screen, Tea partiers should understand that, as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” only applies to Main Street, not Wall Street.
Far from being anti-capitalist, Mitt Romney’s opponents are asking one of the fundamental questions that brought forth the tea party rebellion: Do we have free markets and moral hazard or do we have crony capitalism where favored interests have the advantage over the little guy?
Romney has given several muddled and disingenuous explanations for why he supported the TARP Wall Street bailout. In his book he said, "[TARP] was intended to prevent a run on virtually every bank and financial institution in the country," and he says "it did, in fact, keep our economy from total meltdown."
Later, during The Washington Post – Bloomberg News debate Romney claimed the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package "was designed to keep not just a collapse of individual banking institutions, but to keep the entire currency of the country worth something."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
TARP was not sold as a program to prop-up the dollar; it was sold as a means of keeping credit markets liquid, to keep banks lending to businesses, so businesses would keep people employed.
From the perspective of keeping people employed, TARP has been a spectacular failure.
Since TARP was passed three years ago, far from using TARP funds for business credit, so businesses might keep people employed, banks have reported three years of shrinking loan portfolios. Millions of workers have remained unemployed or underemployed during those three years, but their taxes will be paying for the bailouts Romney supported for years to come.
And the major reason TARP failed to protect jobs was that instead of being a program to keep credit available by moving illiquid mortgage-backed securities off the books of banks, TARP quickly became a no-strings-attached cash infusion to favored insider financial institutions and corporations, whose highly compensated employees are now supporting Mitt Romney.
Among the insiders who received the no-strings-attached cash were Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, Calyon, Barclays Plc, Rabobank, Danske, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Bank of America, and Lloyds Banking Group.
Not surprisingly, just a cursory examination of Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports shows Romney banked over $798,000 from employees of TARP recipients.
To Mitt Romney, venture capitalist, the average worker is an expendable line on a spreadsheet, until that worker’s tax dollars were needed to bailout financiers who promoted the leveraged buyouts and packaged the exotic financial instruments that led to the financial meltdown of 2008.
Who is more anti-capitalist? Is it Romney’s opponents, who question whether or not a form of capitalism that allows a handful or rich people to avoid moral hazard, manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and then walk off with the money by getting a bailout from the taxpayers?
Or are the real anti-capitalists Mitt Romney, and his establishment friends in the Washington – Wall Street Axis, who hypocritically like having the option of firing the little guy and stripping the factory on Main Street on the way up, but then use their inside power and influence to demand those same little taxpayers bail them out on the way down?
…..“The New York Times reports that Romney continues to receive a share of investment profits from Bain, although he retired almost 13 years ago.”…. Source
Carlyle Group, Bain Capital, And The Tax Treatment Of 'The Carry'
10/25/11 Perry calls on Romney to release tax returns
12/22/11 Romney says he won’t release tax returns
01/11/12 Palin urges Romney to Release Tax Returns, Provide Proof he Created 100,000 Jobs at Bain Capital
…”Chris Cavarretta, of Stratham, New Hampshire, said his fellow Mormon friend met Romney last week at a campaign stop and told him to "choose the right"--a popular LDS slogan similar to "What would Jesus do?"
"His eyes lit up, and he said, 'Yes, always.'"….. Source
..and after Obama used Bain during the closing of GM car dealerships all over the US, tis all forgotten....and tax payers never saw 90 billion of so-called loans paid back
Not surprisingly, just a cursory examination of Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports shows Romney banked over $798,000 from employees of TARP recipients."....
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“A previous story incorrectly reported that Mitt Romney’s former firm, Bain & Co., was part of a team of consulting companies that advised President Barack Obama on a decision to shutter car dealerships during the auto bailout.
Bain & Co. said it has no connection to the “Bain Consulting” firm referenced in government documents.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45979278
Absolutely damming idictment of Romney and Bain from
Mr. Conservative Richard Viguerie. Now let one of the RINOs on Faux News say Viguerie is talking like a democrat. He’ll have them for lunch.
Viguerie always has a way of getting to the key point and making it crystal clear.
my post #3 has to be retracted...wasn’t Bain...CNBC retracted the story
Seems the MSM wants F&F,Solyndra,Fannie,..and Dumbo got more from Bain in donations than Myth...*smiles*
yeah just got that
Bump!
BUMP!
The anti Capitalism charge from Rush, Hannity, Levin et al...no use mentioning Republican establishment figures who make no bones about their Romney tilt, nor the Wall Street Journal...is just as bogus as it can be.
They called out Gingrich and Perry for digging into the morass and critiquing certain practices, as though you can’t support Capitalism and look at bad practice at the same time...
Now, in effect, Viguerie is calling THEM out.
And better than they could hope to.
“Texas Gov. Rick Perry ... has money to spend and nothing left to lose. Former Sen. Rick Santorum lost some of the momentum he generated by tying Romney in Iowa, but he may get support from a group of influential conservative activists, including direct-mail maven Richard Viguerie, who are meeting in Texas.”
http://www.independentagenda.com/politics-and-2012-election/they-live-to-fight-another-day/
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Viguerie
In January 2008, Viguerie launched http://www.ultimateronpaul.com, a website designed to promote the 2008 presidential candidacy of U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, whom Viguerie described as “truly a principled conservative in the grand tradition of Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan” and who “has differentiated himself from all the other candidates, whose allegiance is to Big Government Republicanism.”
Is this saying that Viguerie, who supported Paul in 2008, is meeting with other Conservatives, to possibly help out Rick Perry?
They’re supposedly meeting to try to come up with one to back. I believe that is the idea.
More about Viguerie from Wikipedia...
“When Viguerie spoke at a conference of Libertarian Party state chairs in March 2007, he stated the following about the 2006 United States general elections: “Whenever conservatives are unhappy, bad things happen for the Republican Party.”
They are connected.
If you read carefully, the connection is there.
However, the central point is to demand that the talk show kingpins, etc. stop with their absurd claim that to criticize specific practices of a specific type of company or even a specific company is to ATTACK CAPITALISM.
No, it isn’t.
How stupid do they think their listeners are?
If Romney’s problem is hypocrisy, then he’s a shoo -in. Compared to Obama there ain’t no hypocrisy.
It’s obvious to everyone Romney is NOT wanted by a large majority of conservatives.
SO time for Plan B.
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