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"Ann Romney ... told ABC that "it's our turn now" to assume the presidency."
... another kind of "en lement culture" that doesn't bother the Repugs and conservatives in the least.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...13244f3d1aca6d
Enlightening discussion of predatory capital.
Mitt Romney: American Parasite
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2012-0...ican-parasite/
"Ann Romney ... told ABC that "it's our turn now" to assume the presidency."
... another kind of "en lement culture" that doesn't bother the Repugs and conservatives in the least.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...13244f3d1aca6d
"Romney has repeatedly claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, and says that providing work for Americans was a primary company goal."
He Lies
A Bain guy said "no". The primary goal was to make money for Bain and its investors.
Yeah, boutons. We can read the article.
I am generally a fan of venture capital, but the cases they cited were pretty... damning to a man who says that he was a shiny knight who always managed things better than previous owners.
Leverage, loot, dump.But if critics are quick to disregard Romney's triumphs, defenders are equally swift to rationalize his catastrophes. They'll note that for all Romney's bankruptcies, most were rescued by new companies and survive today. It's the final dollar tally that matters.
Yet they seem strangely incurious about the ruin he's delivered across the country. Take Kansas City, for example.
The Armco plant closing involved more than the torching of 750 jobs, Morrow says. Contractors and suppliers collapsed. Workers' children and widows lost health care and pension benefits. And while Bain received millions in tax breaks — paid for by the very people left holding the bag — Romney walked away millions richer.
So one might forgive everyday Americans for feeling they're on the wrong end of a rigged game, one where the wealthy always win — no matter how inept — and the little guy is left to hack through the debris.
So in January, The Wall Street Journal did its best to piece together Romney's track record, reviewing 77 investments made under his direction. It turned out that nearly one in three of the companies experienced severe financial trouble. One in five wound up in bankruptcy.
The more telling figure: Of Romney's 10 biggest moneymakers, he ultimately destroyed four of them, leaving bankruptcy judges to clean up the mess.
As Foster sees it, Romney was an early pioneer of gaming the system. It would take another decade before large banks used many of the same principles to detonate the mortgage industry.
"The great irony is that his entire management experience at Bain Capital is buying companies and loading them up with debt and then looting the balance sheet," Foster says. "It's the very model that drove the American economy off the cliff, then left other people to manage the wreckage."
.
Not exactly the kind of skill one wants in a president.
You know, some people don't see Barack Obama's involvement with ACORN and their extortionist suits against banks to make bad loans under the Community Reinvestment Act as much different.
Arguably, that eventually had a larger, more negative impact on the economy than Bain Capital making decisions, unpopular to you but, that gave their investors an 88% annual return on their investment.
It was their company, right?
It was their money, correct?
I know, it's a sad story. As sad as the 20,000 employees put out of work by Obama's Gulf drilling moratorium.
Why would a company that was doing so well sell to Bain?
This story was a hack piece as far as I can tell. Comparing what Bain did to Enron is not only incorrect but its a complete lie. Bain did nothing illegal, Enron cooked its books. Could not get past page 1.
I think the article was trying to point out that this was not venture capital. Vulture capital, maybe.
The article took pains to repeatedly state that what Bain did was legal. It's a hack piece in regards to what, exactly?
Are we suffering a steel rod shortage?
And, while I have absolutely no knowledge on the matter, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the Steelworkers Union at Georgetown Steel was intransigent about some concession Bain asked for, and so, Bain said 'em.
Yep, I'd bet there's a union story in there somewhere...but, I could be wrong.
Read the article again for the answers you apparently missed the first time thru.
Like I said, comparing Bain to Enron on page 1. Whether the writer says what Bain did was legal 10 times. Impling that Bain and Enron are similar in any way is dishonest. Why raise Enron at all if you are giving an informative piece on Romney's work at Bain?
Yoni, brings up CRA as a huge issue, just like he said CRA caused the housing bubble/burst.
Nobody can force the banks to do anything, as we see in the post-2008 period when they have basically refused to help the underwater buyers, nor accept responsibility for their criminally fraudulent (non)paperwork (MERS).
The only people who talked about CRA were assholes like Yoni blowing smokescreens for the real culprits.
The banks and private lenders DID LEND at sub-prime rates to "red line" areas. And CRA didn't force them to lend.
btw, here's the Repugs protecting TBTF:
House Republicans Serve The Banks By Voting To Repeal Key Anti-Bailout Provision
The House Financial Services Committee voted along party lines to repeal the section of the law that allows the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp to liquidate large, failing financial ins utions seized by the government.
This authority was included in the law in an attempt to avoid the type of market chaos and government bailouts that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 by giving the government a mechanism for better controlling the breakup of a financial giant.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...-anti-bailout/
Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-19-2012 at 01:51 PM.
Okay. Done. (Actually, I didn't finish ... again)
First thing that strikes me, that I missed the first time around:
Sounds to me like that's an appropriate activity for a venture capitalist.In other words, people like Romney are the wolves, culling the herd of the weak and infirm.
The story is a one-sided smear job. , it's le gives that away...there was never going to be anything in that story that was fair-minded to Bain Capital or Romney. I stopped after finishing the part about Georgetown Steel and GSI.
Did the story's author ever get around to offering the other side of the story? Anyone at Bain interviewed? Did they interview the previous owners at Georgetown Steel about how the sale was negotiated?
Was Georgetown Steel really as fiscally sound as the laid off worker claimed? I wouldn't trust that story to tell the truth about it. Does that author have anything nice to say about any venture capitalist firms? , he bills himself as a critic of the profession.
Everything said by the worker is taken, uncritically, and at face value about all the bad things Bain Capital did to them.
What about all the successful companies acquired and owned by Bain Capital? How does Bain decide which ones to bleed and which ones to nurture? I'm sure there's a formula.
One that gave Bain Capital investors an 88% annual return on their investments.
That's success.
Again, if you'd finished the article, you would have the answers to these new questions.
Because, the operational results were largely the same....bankruptcy, liquidation, and job elimination whilst siphoning off a nice little compensation package if you were on top.
I quoted a story earlier from a takeover broker who said Willard Gecko's word was worthless.
Willard Gecko would bid high, scaring off other buyers. Having won, would then not pay the bid amount, knocking off tons of $Ms for "problems".
Sounds like the Willard Gecko we know now. Will say ANYTHING in any situation.
metonym? personification? synecdoche? all seem to fit...
there's a sort of tacit prosopopeia, posters posters can always attempt to hide their real feelings, if accidentally expressed, under the broad skirts of parody :
it was an impersonation, where's your sense of humor?
Whom?
I doubt it. I'm having trouble believing what I've read so far.
Unless you're going to tell me Romney authored this, under a pseudonym, as some sort of self-flaggelating confession; I didn't see any value in continuing beyond the first page.
It's kind of like reading a treatise on Israel written by the Iranian President. The guy is an activist, with an ax to grind over venture capitalists.
There's nothing to see. Obama has already destroyed more industries and more jobs than Romney would ever hope to.
You have to approach it with a bit of an open mind. I'm not advocating that you digest every word as gospel, but there are nuggets of good info in here if you're not predisposed to ignore what you don't want to hear.
And why the are you couching this v Obama? It's an article largely about predatory capital...a story that Romney happened to star in for a few chapters.
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