What say you?
Mittens/Bain was just doing what Dear Leader is doing albeit without using any Vaseline; bend over and grab your ankles, you won't feel a thing!!!
Yeah, that's right, I'm a Newt supporter all the way.
But, but, but, the MSM says that Mitt is the most “electable” candidate for President. / sarcasm
Wait, is this article by the same Froma Harrop that compared the Tea Party to terrorists and at the same time runs the “Civility Project”? The same Froma Harrop that the Daily Show just skewered (with video right here on FR) for being so biased that when made directly obvious to her she still couldn’t see it. Kinda amusing that an article by this woman would be used to attack a venture capitalist company - even one run by Romney the chameleon. Sorry, but my guess is there is more to this story than what Harrop is telling us. I don’t think these attacks on capitalism are the right way to go. There is plenty about RINO Mitt to attack from the right without sounding like a bunch of occutards.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-rush-freaks-20120112,0,16119.story
I cannot wait to find out what is left of US, for Romney to plumb off US. Why should we change donkeys if what this administration has done in ‘saving’ the auto industry is no different than what Romney would do? I am really confused as to what Romney’s intentions are for US.
I hate Romney with a Passion, but the attacks on Bain are Bullsh*%.
In this case, they purchased a dying company in 1993 and 8 years later - the is EIGHT years later, it went bust and Bain profitted $12 million for that duration. By and large, this was a meager return.
Capitalism must have investors. Not all business ideas are produced by those with the means to position them for success financially. Attacks on Private Equity firms are an attack on capitalism - period! This is not the road we need to go down and we are playing right into the liberal’s hand.
Let me make this clear, I am not voting for Romney in the primaries!!!!!
They made around 4 million on an 8 million investment over a period 10 years (article is lying). Those 750 Iron Mill workers had jobs for that period. Without Bain’s infusion of cash the company would have gone bankrupt 10 years earlier.
Everyone one of these examples the left (and the anti-capitalists on Freerepublic) use involves a corrupt union that is unwilling to negotiate. The underfunded pension fund was underfunded by the union before the cash investment and unsustainable under the best of conditions. The only way for this company to have survived would have been to bust the union. However, Bain did provide high wages and benefits for these workers for ten years longer then they could hope for without their help. They weren’t competitive because of unreasonable union demands.
I get your comment #14. There is a reason capitalism is not working. There is a view from the left and a view from the right, but both are looking at the same thing. Equal opportunity is essential, and that has been so greatly distorted in America, that it is all but gone. When I say ‘equal’ I am not saying ‘share the wealth’. Mitt/Bain will be the poster boy for unions and for socialism. It is unfortunate that we are so blind that we can't see that although Bain was legal, it was not something we should condone. Mitt will get destroyed over this in the general election and he will take down free enterprise with him. We can all see how the housing market and resulting of collapse of our economy was bad, and yet we can't see that once the scales are tipped in favor of some, all get screwed. The scales were tipped in favor of people who couldn't afford homes because of bad laws, and we all got screwed. With Bain the scales were tipped in favor of investors because of laws. The companies and employees were on the hook for all the debt, but the investors weren't. THAT is not capitalism.
Good post.
Laissez-faire - also called individualism, the doctrine of unrestricted freedom in commerce, esp for private interests - thefreedictionary.com
BTW, unless the laws have changed recently, pension funds are segregated from the business & may not be raided by the business or its owners, old or new. Any pension bailout occurred because the poor management prior to the buyout failed to adequately fund & manage the pension. And w/o the buyout, these failing companies would have gone out of business, with all jobs lost, all investment lost, & a nearly worthless pension.
Gingrich, Perry, & the Left would have us believe that venture capitalists walk into a business & announce they are taking over. Actually, they are INVITED into the business by the current owners, who want to salvage the business & some of their investment before it goes bankrupt. Nine times out of 10, those owners are motivated by MONEY, not jobs or the already underfunded pension.
If Bain Capital made money in investing in & assisting these businesses to avoid total collapse, then I say, “Keep up the good work!”.
I suppose that if Romney was a surgeon specializing in amputations, we would be criticizing him & his employers for creating so many cripples.
Before you jump to accuse me of supporting Romney, let me assure you, I DETEST ROMNEY & WILL NEVER SUPPORT HIM FOR ANY PUBLIC OFFICE!!!
My support is for capitalism & the free market!
All the idiots on this thread defending Bain Capital as a “capitalist”, might as well be shilling for Solyndra, too.
All the idiots on this thread defending Bain Capital as “capitalist”, might as well be shilling for Solyndra, too.
This is NOT capitalism folks, this is sleaze and just barely legal. The people who do this are reprehensable. They want to do that in private business, it's up to them, but I do NOT want one of them to be president of this country.
“Mitt Romney is a “job cremator””
“Mitt Romney has claimed that while at Bain Capital and Bain & Co. between 1984 and 1999 he helped create 100,000 net new jobs yet in his 1994 attempt to unseat Ted Kennedy he claimed 10,000 net new jobs. Since Romney retired from Bain in 1999, it’s plausible that the other 90,000 happened between 1994 and 1999, though it’s highly unlikely. It appears Romney is adding up all the jobs “now” at the few companies that later thrived.
National Review, a leading conservative publication, has claimed that Mitt Romney’s firm “never asked for a bailout” but there is abundant evidence that isn’t true. In October 1993, Bain Capital became majority shareholder of a steel company called Worldwide Grinding Systems, later renamed GS Technologies. Eight years later the mill was padlocked and 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they were promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.
The federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp., which insures company retirement plans, had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees. In all, Bain Capital more than doubled its investment.
Bain made its profit after taking control of the company by piling on more and more debt. The amount totaled $378 million by 1995. The new company also issued $125 million in bonds. Bain put inexperienced managers in place and spurned a generous buyout offer from a competitor. All these moves guaranteed that the company would fail.
Four of the 10 companies that made Bain the most money under Romney went bankrupt. The Wall Street Journal looked at 77 businesses Bain invested in under Romney’s leadership and found that 22% went bankrupt or closed their doors within eight years. Romney generated fantastic returns for himself and investors, with $2.5 billion in profits. About 70% of that came from just 10 deals and four of those companies wound up going bankrupt. The buyout firm delivered an average annual return on investment of 88 percent between its founding in 1984 and when Romney left in 1999.”
Sounds like Romney can use debt and bankruptcy as well as O’Bummer!
No “humanity clause” can suspend economic reality. In fact, the exact goal that Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were trying to achieve was to suspend all laws and principles in order that their societies produced the perfect Socialist Man. The resulting hell on earth was an attempt to effect the ultimate “humanity clause”, a kind of secular salvation of humanity.
Blankfein justified it by simply stating that it's "just business" to make money for the firm. No morals. No ethics. Just greed.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
If we don't vote for righteous men, we get what we deserve.
We no longer teach capitalism - so no one understands how it works.
We only teach Marxism in our schools. And Marxism only points out the flaws in Capitalism.
Our Republic could very well be screwed. :(