Romney's Bain Figures Dont Add Up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z2
Romney’s Bain figures don’t add up
Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:35 AM ET, 01/09/2012

During Saturday night’s debate, Mitt Romney repeated his oft-made claim that his time at Bain Capital led to the creation of more than 100,000 jobs. George Stephanopoulos, one of the debate’s moderators, asked whether that number counted both jobs that were created and jobs that were lost. Romney’s answer was dismissive — and untrue. “It includes the net of both. I’m a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that.”

The Romney campaign has repeatedly explained how they arrived at the 100,000 jobs figure. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, for instance, got Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom on the record. “Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino’s (7,900 jobs). This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain.”

The American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis also asked the Romney campaign for details on their jobs number. “Here’s what the Romney campaign e-mailed me when I asked for some substantiation of the claim,” wrote Pethokoukis:


(Romney campaign/James Pethokoukis) Whatever you want to say about Romney’s time at Bain, the number he is providing to reporters, the number Stephanopoulos was asking about, the number Romney is using publicly, is not net-net. It takes three successful companies of the hundreds Romney was involved with and uses their employment totals now — long after Romney finished working with them. Even Pethokoukis, a Romney-friendly conservative, concludes, “That’s not going to cut it.”

To read the rest of the article click on above link

Mitt 'Free Enterprise' Romney sought and received federal bailout for Bain
byJed Lewison

Pious baloney from National Review:
Mitt Romney ran a firm that invested in struggling businesses, made money, and never asked for a bailout — and Romney’s rivals apparently expect Republican voters to regard that as a liability.
Never asked for a bailout? Uh:

Republican Senate nominee Mitt Romney's rescue of a business consulting firm was achieved in part by convincing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to forgive roughly $10 million of the company's debts, according to sources close to the deal and federal records obtained by The Boston Globe.
Romney, whose business acumen has been the cornerstone of his campaign, has said saving the Bain & Co. consulting firm from the brink of bankruptcy in 1991 was the accomplishment that most convinced him he had the mettle to be a US senator.

That's from The Boston Globe, October 25, 1994 (via Nexis). So not only did Mitt Romney ask for a federal bailout—he received one. And unlike loan guarantees, Romney sought—and received—the equivalent of cold hard cash. Romney apologists will say that the FDIC is funded by financial transaction fees, but taxpayers provided the backstop, and even though Bain & Co. went on to make millions more in profits, the fund was never replenished.

That's not the only bailout in Romney's past, however. When a steel mill backed by Bain collapsed, not only was the entire workforce out of a job, but the federal government was on the hook to the tune of $44 million to bail out the mill's pension plan. Bain, however, made nearly $10 million on the deal, profiting handsomely from failure.

I can't say that I'm surprised that Mitt Romney and his allies have conveniently forgotten about these bailouts ... but I am a little puzzled about why his Republican rivals haven't brought them up yet. They don't have much—if any—more time.


in addition:

Romney is trying to avoid the whole topic by saying "free enterprise is on trial," but if his definition of free enterprise is that financial wizards should be able to make millions while bankrupting companies and laying off workers, simply calling it "economic freedom" won't do him any good. Heads I win, tails you lose isn't a winning message—and it's not what Mitt Romney talked about when he outlined his credentials for the White House.

In his own words, Romney said his experience as a job creator is what entitles him to be president. But if it turns out that he profited from the destruction of jobs, doesn't that destroy his entire rationale for being president? In the context of this campaign, the debate over economic freedom isn't directly relevant.

The key thing is that it was Mitt Romney who made his private sector experience an issue in the campaign. He said that it was relevant because he created jobs. Now he's saying it's wrong to question his record—that any criticism amounts to putting "free enterprise" on trial. That's pious baloney. And given his unwillingness to defend his job creation record without resorting to name calling, it's pretty obvious that he knows he was lying.

Havent heard one peep from SiriuslyWrong on any of this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Havakasha

Havent heard one peep from SiriuslyWrong on any of this.

---

I don't get to vote in the primary elections. I haven't really been paying attention. Though I do know Newt scored big in SC, just as my SC colleague said.

by James Surowiecki
JANUARY 30, 2012 PRINTE-MAILSINGLE PAGE
Private-Equity Funds; Mitt Romney; Presidential Candidates; Bain Capital; Business; Harry and David; Jobs
At this point, the people who run America’s private-equity funds must be ruing the day Mitt Romney decided to run for President. His fellow Republican candidates, of all people, have painted a vivid picture of private-equity firms—including Bain Capital, where he worked for fifteen years—as job-destroying vultures, who scavenge the meat from American companies and leave their carcasses by the side of the road. Not since the days of “Wall Street” and “Barbarians at the Gate” have the masters of leveraged buyouts looked quite so bad.

Given the weak job market, it makes sense that the attacks have focussed on layoffs. But the real problem with leveraged-buyout firms isn’t their impact on jobs, which studies suggest isn’t that substantial one way or the other. A 2008 study of companies bought by private-equity firms found that their job growth was only about one per cent slower than at similar, public companies; there was more job destruction but also more job creation. And, while private-equity firms are not great employers in terms of wage growth, there’s not much evidence that they’re significantly worse than the rest of corporate America, which has been treating workers more stingily for about three decades.

The real reason that we should be concerned about private equity’s expanding power lies in the way these firms have become increasingly adept at using financial gimmicks to line their pockets, deriving enormous wealth not from management or investing skills but, rather, from the way the U.S. tax system works. Indeed, for an industry that’s often held up as an exemplar of free-market capitalism, private equity is surprisingly dependent on government subsidies for its profits. Financial engineering has always been central to leveraged buyouts. In a typical deal, a private-equity firm buys a company, using some of its own money and some borrowed money. It then tries to improve the performance of the acquired company, with an eye toward cashing out by selling it or taking it public. The key to this strategy is debt: the model encourages firms to borrow as much as possible, since, just as with a mortgage, the less money you put down, the bigger your potential return on investment. The rewards can be extraordinary: when Romney was at Bain, it supposedly earned eighty-eight per cent a year for its investors. But piles of debt also increase the risk that companies will go bust.



Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financ...#ixzz1kJ6JK7Yq

I mean you really do want Romney to be transparent with regard to his Bain figures dont yuu?
I mean you arent going to call me a Marxist and someone who opposes free enterprise just becausei want to know what actually went on during his tenure there? lol

How did you do in math?
Dont you want to know if his figures add up?