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Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney $ Bain Capital

flounder

Well-known member
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital


How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill

By Matt Taibbi
August 29, 2012 7:00 AM ET


The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.

The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.



snip...



And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.



snip...





see full text ;



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829



if you believe the republicans want to ‘take the country back’, you may be correct. but what they will take it back to is like Vice President Biden said, back in chains, back to the stone age of the only person that had any civil rights were white, male, rich, folks. if your not white, if your gay, if you’re a woman, if your poor or middle class, if your mentally challenged, or disabled, not healthy, then you’re a dog I tell you, and if the republican gop romney ryan platform gets elected, America will be set back 50 years or more in terms if civil rights, women’s rights, human rights.

let's take care of our own, the Vets, our poor, our elderly, our disabled, our mentally challenged, and yes, even the hungry homeless deserve help.

if a gay couple gets sick, do they not deserve health care? are gay people not human?

healthcare for all Americans. why not? all the rich and Congress have it (all the same).

stop the war on women.

stop the war on gays.

stop the war on minorities.

we must educate our children, sending them to school everyday is not good enough. they must learn. we must teach them to be physically fit again.




TAXES




SOME OF ROMNEY RYAN GOP ‘FOR THE RICH’ PLATFORM




TAXES:


"We reject the use of taxation to redistribute income, fund unnecessary or ineffective programs or foster the crony capitalism that corrupts both politicians and corporations."

It says a Republican administration would extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, pending reform of the tax code.

It says the party would strive to eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains altogether for lower- and middle-income taxpayers. It also would work to repeal the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. ..end




tax the rich. hit them hard. make the rich finally start paying their fare share, and please include their pensions, stock options, annual incentive, etc., because taxes on one million salary is one thing, but taxes on annual incentive, stock options, and other perks, well, that's another story. tax it all the same. this is the top paid exec. out of 100 examples in Houston area alone recently ;


base salary $1,400,000.

Annual incentive $21,821,400.

total equity $6,414,055.

all other comp $276,207.

change in pension $1,617,757.

Total direct compensation $31,529,419.

see more here, top 100 greedy in Houston, Texas.

see why the romney ryan gop platform wants to ;





"We reject the use of taxation to redistribute income, fund unnecessary or ineffective programs or foster the crony capitalism that corrupts both politicians and corporations."

It says a Republican administration would extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, pending reform of the tax code.

It says the party would strive to eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains altogether for lower- and middle-income taxpayers. It also would work to repeal the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. ..end



see why here ;



http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/07/30/pay-swells-for-top-bosses/





SHOW US YOUR TAX RECORDS MITT, ALL OF THEM !



OBAMA 2012
 

Larrry

Well-known member
bsmeter.jpg
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
And flounder, you know what you posted to be true because_________________________________________________________

And if you can't answer that satisfactorily, you need to delete the word
"true" out of the subject line.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Taibbi joined Mark Ames in 1997 to co-edit the controversial English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile. Of Exile, Taibbi said, "We were out of the reach of American libel law, and we had a situation where we weren’t really accountable to our advertisers. We had total freedom."[citation needed] In the U.S. media, Playboy magazine published pieces on Russia both by Taibbi and by Taibbi and Ames together during this time.

In 2002, he returned to the U.S. to start the satirical bi-weekly The Beast in Buffalo, New York, which he eventually left declaring that "Running a business and writing is too much." Taibbi continued as a freelancer for The Nation, Playboy, New York Press (where he wrote a regular political column for more than two years), Rolling Stone, and New York Sports Express (as Editor at Large). Taibbi said being a journalist was a "career failure. I wanted to be a novelist," he announced at an NYU lecture.Taibbi left the New York Press in August 2005, shortly after his editor Jeff Koyen was forced to quit over issues raised by Taibbi's column "The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope."[2][3][4] "I have since learned that there would not have been an opportunity for me to stay anyway," Taibbi later wrote.[5]

Taibbi became a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, penning feature-length articles on domestic and international affairs, along with a weekly political online column titled "The Low Post" for the magazine's website. Taibbi writes for the print edition of Rolling Stone, and contributes to their website in his current blog, "Taibblog". A later online column titled "Year of the Rat" was meant to document the 2008 election season, but it ended after only a few postings.[6]

Taibbi covered the 2008 presidential campaign for Real Time with Bill Maher,[7] and he has made several guest appearances on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show[8] to discuss the 2009 economic crisis. He also appears on Democracy Now![9] and serves as a contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.[10] Taibbi is an occasional guest on the Thom Hartmann radio and TV shows.

In short this guy is a total failure. Wonder how much debt his former employees incurred due to his failure ???
 

Tam

Well-known member
flounder said:
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital


How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill

By Matt Taibbi
August 29, 2012 7:00 AM ET

Lemon-Picking Bain Capital, Obama-style

Posted on May 24, 2012

President Obama and a super PAC that supports him are stealing a page from Newt Gingrich and Ted Kennedy in running TV ads and web videos that slam Mitt Romney for his years at Bain Capital. And, like Gingrich and Kennedy before him, Obama is lemon-picking — that is, highlighting the venture capital firm’s failed businesses and ignoring its successful ones.

Both Obama and the super PAC Priorities USA Action spotlight two businesses — Ampad and GS Industries — that filed for bankruptcy while under Bain’s control, leaving hundreds of workers unemployed. In the case of GS Industries, Bain took over a shrinking company in a difficult market and kept it operating for several years before it filed for bankruptcy (a bankruptcy that was arguably hastened by Bain’s hefty borrowing and self-enrichment). Bain purchased Ampad from a struggling parent company that was shedding jobs and assets, and then expanded it before a heavy debt burden forced it into bankruptcy.

Bain’s portfolio also includes major successes, such as Staples Office and The Sports Authority. But you won’t see them here. Indeed, Romney responded to the TV ad about the bankruptcy of GS Industries, a Kansas City steel company, with his own ad about Bain’s investment in an Indiana steel company that has grown and added thousands of employees. And Bain itself issued a statement defending its overall record, saying that “revenues grew in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested.”

But private-equity firms are primarily focused on creating wealth for investors. Sometimes that’s accomplished by growth, and increased employment. And sometimes it’s accomplished by cutting costs or eliminating poorly performing firms, resulting in job losses. So Romney has opened himself to Obama’s attacks by claiming credit for creating jobs — sometimes without justification, as we have written about before.

Private-equity firms in general have “only a modest net impact on employment,” according to a study released in September 2011 by the National Bureau of Economic Research that tracked the performance of 3,200 acquired firms and their 150,000 establishments. Bain has not said how many jobs may have been created at the 350 companies in which it has invested.

The Fall of GS Industries

The Obama campaign opened its attack on the Bain front with an ad called “Steel,” highlighting Bain’s investment in a Kansas City steel company called GS Industries.

The ad features testimonials from former employees of GS Industries, a steel company in which Bain invested in 1994 that eventually went bankrupt in 2001 and laid off 750 employees.

It begins with former 30-year steelworker Joe Soptic: “They made as much money off it as they could. And they closed it down, they filed for bankruptcy without any concern for the families or the communities.”

Jack Cobb, a steelworker for 31 years, likens Bain to “a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”

The Obama campaign ad was quickly followed by one from pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action, also featuring the demise of GS Industries. The ad features another GS employee, Pat Wells, who says, “Bain Capital always made money. If we lost, they made money. If we survived, they made money. It’s as simple as that. He promised us the same things he’s promising the United States. He’ll give you the same thing he gave us. Nothing. He’ll take it all.”

In its simplest terms, it’s true that Bain made money on the GS Industries deal even though the company went bankrupt. Under Bain’s leadership, the company took on massive debt. Much of the debt was taken on to make much-needed updates to aging equipment, but some of it was also used to enrich Bain and its investors. Some analysts say the company’s large debt was a key contributor to the company’s fall. Adding to the employees’ woes, the company announced at the bankruptcy that it could not honor commitments it had made regarding pension and other benefits. So there’s no getting around that this was not Bain’s finest hour.

But, as is often the case with the Bain attacks we have seen so far, there is more to this story.

Let’s start at the start. With Romney at the helm, Bain Capital invested in the small Kansas City steel mill called GST Steel Co. in 1993. It was a company that traced its roots to 1888 but had fallen on hard times. According to the Kansas City Star, the company’s ranks had dropped from 4,500 employees in 1970 to just 1,500 employees by 1983.

In addition, the company was beset by aging equipment and faced stiff competition in a specialized market, according to a lengthy Reuters report on the company. Nonetheless, Bain saw potential in the company and, Reuters reported, invested $8 million in it. That initial investment was quickly recouped when, in 1994, the company issued $125 million in bonds and paid out $65 million in dividends – $36.1 million of which went to Bain, according to Reuters. The following year, Bain merged the company with another in Georgetown, S.C., renaming the company GS Industries, and issued another $125 million in bonds.

Bain also reinvested an additional $16.5 million in the company, evidence that Bain intended to keep the firm going. Nevertheless, six years later, the company declared bankruptcy and eliminated 750 jobs.

It also reneged on pension and other benefits it had agreed to in 1997. The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. later determined the company had severely underfunded its pension, and the federal agency covered the cost of basic pension payments. So those aspects of the ads are accurate.

Was it the debt load that doomed the company? Some analysts cited by Reuters said it certainly didn’t help. Others blamed the union or competition from Asia. In a 1999 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company stated, “Distressed economic conditions in other countries, particularly Asia, have resulted in record levels of imported steel products into the domestic market causing dramatic declines in selling prices industry-wide.”

It was a very bad time in general for the steel industry in the U.S. A 2003 report from the U.S. International Trade Commission found that between 1999 and 2003, “31 steel companies producing products subject to the safeguard measures [including tariffs on foreign imports] have filed for bankruptcy protection.”

The Romney campaign also argues that the GS Industries bankruptcy and layoffs occurred after Romney had left day-to-day operations at Bain. The bankruptcy occurred in early 2001 and Romney agreed to head up the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee in February 1999. Nonetheless, the debt was incurred under Romney’s leadership.

“I take personal responsibility for making the investment,” Romney told the Boston Globe in 2002. “But I didn’t manage these companies. Our philosophy at Bain Capital was to support management teams in companies where we saw potential for growth, or in companies that were in financial distress that we thought we might be able to save.”

That may be, but since Romney takes credit for job gains at companies Bain invested in — and which he may not have personally managed — it’s certainly fair for Romney’s opponents to tie him to Bain’s failures as well.

Again, it isn’t that the facts of the attack ads are wrong, it’s that the companies are some of the worst performers in the Bain portfolio, which includes many more success stories.

In fact, the Romney campaign countered with just such a story in an ad called “American Dream” that highlighted Bain’s minority investment in Steel Dynamics, a company that has grown and added thousands of employees.

A Plant Closing in Indiana

The Obama campaign and Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that supports the president, each recently released videos about SCM Office Supplies Inc., in Marion, Ind., which closed not long after it was purchased in 1994 by Ampad, a paper products company controlled by Bain Capital.

If it seems familiar, that’s because it is the same plant featured in the “King of Bain” mini-documentary we wrote about during the Republican primaries. That ad was put on the air by Winning Our Future, a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC. In fact, Loris Huffman — a former union representative at SCM Office Supplies — appears in both “King of Bain” and the new Priorities USA Action TV ad, “Loris and Ampad.”

But, as we wrote before, Romney’s opponents blame him for business decisions at the Indiana plant in 1994, when Romney was on a leave from Bain Capital to run for U.S. Senate.

For example, the five-minute-plus Web video produced by the Obama campaign starts with a woman saying, “I really feel in my heart people need to know what Mitt Romney did to Marion, Ind., in 1994.” A minute into the film, which was released May 21, this text appears on the screen: “1994 Bain Capital-owned Ampad buys SCM. Mitt Romney is Bain Capital’s CEO.”

Romney, however, was doing other things in 1994. He officially announced he would run against Sen. Edward Kennedy on Feb. 2, 1994 — five months before Ampad bought SCM in July 1994 from Smith Corona. Nevertheless, the Obama campaign video shows headlines and even a company memo from July 1994, recalling how Ampad required the Indiana workers to reapply for their jobs — a move that resulted in fewer jobs and, for most of the remaining employees, lower pay and reduced benefits. The labor strike that ensued occurred in September 1994, a month before the Senate election.

So, Romney was not working at Bain during those critical early months for the plant and its workers, although that didn’t stop Kennedy from using the labor problems at Indiana plant against Romney in the 1994 campaign.

Now, it is true that Romney was back in control of Bain when Ampad closed the plant. That happened in February 1995. Marc B. Wolpow, a former managing director at Bain Capital, told the Los Angeles Times in 2007 that Romney could have prevented the plant from closing. But Wolpow, who reported directly to Romney before and after the Senate campaign, said Romney made the “right business decision” for investors to close the plant.

When Ampad went public in June 1996, the company said in its registration statement filed with the SEC that it closed the Indiana plant because it had relatively unfavorable “work rules and associated costs” compared with other Ampad facilities.


Ampad SEC filing, June 6, 1996: Work rules and associated costs at SCM’s plant in Indiana were less favorable than those at other plants of the Company. As a result of management’s effort to bring the labor agreement at the Indiana plant more in line with market labor agreements, a labor strike occurred on September 1, 1994. Consequently, the Company closed the Indiana plant on February 15, 1995 and moved the equipment to other facilities operated by the Company.

SCM was profitable before Ampad bought it. The Indiana plant had net sales of $22.8 million and a gross profit of $2.4 million between Sept. 1, 1993, and Dec. 31, 1993, Ampad’s registration statement showed. But, as a result of the strike, SCM’s net sales had fallen to $10.4 million and profits had turned to a $500,000 loss during that same period in 1994.

Nevertheless, Bain’s business decisions at that time helped Ampad to flourish.

The Mead Corp. was struggling when it decided to sell Ampad, its commercial office-products business, to Bain in 1992. On July 2, 1992, the Associated Press reported that Mead would eliminate 1,000 jobs over two to three years to save $60 million and that it would sell Ampad to Bain for an undisclosed sum. In its 1996 SEC filing, Ampad reported that sales had grown at an annual rate of 34 percent every year since 1992 under Bain control. In 1995, the company’s net sales were $617.2 million — up from $108 million in 1991.

But the company’s fast-growing sales weren’t enough. By 1999, “Ampad’s debt reached nearly $400 million, up from $11 million in 1993, according to government filings,” the Boston Globe reported. Ampad defaulted on its debt and filed for bankruptcy in January 2000. At the time, Bain owned 34.9 percent of Ampad’s stock.

The Obama and Priorities USA Action videos are correct in saying that Bain earned about $100 million on its initial investment in Ampad. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bain invested $5 million in Ampad and earned $102 million — from management and acquisition fees, as well as tens of millions from the initial public offering in 1996, as the Globe reported.

Ampad emerged from bankruptcy in 2003 and is now owned by Esselte, a global office products company.

– Robert Farley and Eugene Kiely

ANd believe me I don't believe everything these fact checkers say but I doubt they would lie about Obama "Lemon Picking" when it came to Romney since it is the Leftwingnut FactCheck.Org claiming their former board member is the one lemon picking. :wink:

Romney had plenty of successes at Bain Capital but Obama is never going to talk about them and Mitt is not going to as he feels helpping people is a PRIVILEDGE NOT A POLITICAL TALKING POINT.

That may be, but since Romney takes credit for job gains at companies Bain invested in — and which he may not have personally managed — it’s certainly fair for Romney’s opponents to tie him to Bain’s failures as well
.

Funny how his opponents don't want Romney to take credit for the thousands of jobs he created without taking credit for the losses. Now if they would hold Obama to the same standards that would be nice. He seems to get away with saying he created millions of jobs but it is all Bush's and the Republicans fault the Unemployment rate went from 7.3% to 8.3% under HIS WATCH and has stayed there for over 40 months. :roll:

As a JOB CREATOR I think we all know who has the better record Flounder.

BTW if you want to talk about GREED How about we discuss the Obama's vacation habits on tax payer funds while millions of tax payers are told by your hero to tight their belts and pay more in taxes while they lose their homes SHALL WE. :x
 
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