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A little reality about Romney and Bain....

You do realize an 80% success to 20% failure rate is OUTSTANDING in THE REAL WORLD... nevermind the fact that THE BUSINESSES THEY INVESTED IN WERE ALREADY FAILING!!!

The world you live in is dreamland if you think more than 1 in 5 businesses started become profitable over the long term... i think its more like 1 in 20 businesses starting up are bankrupt within 5 years... maybe someone can find the hard numbers on that...

These weren't start up companies -- they were going concerns. I have no idea how Bain's record stacked up relative to other firms.
 
These weren't start up companies -- they were going concerns. I have no idea how Bain's record stacked up relative to other firms.

They were start-up companies... not all of them, but most of the initial companies he was involved with were start up companies... INCLUDING HIS OWN!!! he started with venture capital, not private equity... they changed their approach to private equity after like 5 years...

Bain stacks up as unbelievably highly rated in the very industry... in fact, the new approach they took became the studied model on how to be successful in business within the industry... He commanded rates 5 times as high as the average venture capital / private equity company...
 
What! This is crazy! Bain was there to pick off struggling companies, liquidate there assets and get rid of their workers.

I believe some right-wingers here would state that water is dry and dust is wet if the republican leadership (aka Rush Limbaugh) told them to.

Seriously?!? You think this is right-wingers assessment?!?



This is PBS News Hour's assessment... not exactly right-wingers... in fact you can tell Beth Healey is heavily anti-Romney, yet still has to give credit to how successful Bain was...
 
Seriously?!? You think this is right-wingers assessment?!?



This is PBS News Hour's assessment... not exactly right-wingers... in fact you can tell Beth Healey is heavily anti-Romney, yet still has to give credit to how successful Bain was...


I know huh? It was like watching Beth get water boarded for the truth....
 
They were start-up companies... not all of them, but most of the initial companies he was involved with were start up companies... INCLUDING HIS OWN!!!
Only in the sense that every company is started up at some point.

In any case, Bain's goal was and is to make money for Bain, period.
 
They were start-up companies... not all of them, but most of the initial companies he was involved with were start up companies... INCLUDING HIS OWN!!! he started with venture capital, not private equity... they changed their approach to private equity after like 5 years...

Bain stacks up as unbelievably highly rated in the very industry... in fact, the new approach they took became the studied model on how to be successful in business within the industry... He commanded rates 5 times as high as the average venture capital / private equity company...

bain, while romney was its CEO, was a very successful investment house
it was excellent at investing in underperforming companies and infusing capital and expertise to make them more profitable
but nowhere do we find that bain was a job creator. and as CEO of massachusetts, romney was an abject failure regarding his ability to govern in a way that resulted in adding jobs to the state's economy
he failed then. why would we expect him to succeed on the national level?
 
but nowhere do we find that bain was a job creator.

So for all the companies it helped come out of hard times, or pulled from the brink of bankruptcy (80% of them), some of them being big chain stores that are all over America now, no jobs were created because they were saved and are now successful? Some interesting thinking there... :roll:
 
So for all the companies it helped come out of hard times, or pulled from the brink of bankruptcy (80% of them), some of them being big chain stores that are all over America now, no jobs were created because they were saved and are now successful? Some interesting thinking there... :roll:

romney was no longer bain CEO after '99. let's look at his own characterization of the jobs he helped to create:
when Romney ran for the Senate in 1994, his campaign only claimed he had created 10,000 jobs. In one ad, a narrator said: “Mitt Romney has spent his life building more than 20 businesses and helping to create more than 10,000 jobs. So when it comes to creating jobs, he's not just talk. He's done it.”
Mitt Romney and 100,000 jobs: an untenable figure - The Washington Post
 
If it will turn a profit, they will indeed intentionally destroy a company.

As well they should. If a company is unable to make a product people want at a price they can afford, then it's resources should be reallocated to endeavors that can.
 
As well they should. If a company is unable to make a product people want at a price they can afford, then it's resources should be reallocated to endeavors that can.

Some companies were doing alright until Bain leveraged them to the hilt and sucked off their working capital.
 
Some companies were doing alright until Bain leveraged them to the hilt and sucked off their working capital.

Exceedingly unlikely - companies that are doing well aren't exactly the model that venture capital is looking for - since they are more highly valued, they tend to be too expensive to turn the kind of profit on that justify the risk.
 
romney was no longer bain CEO after '99. let's look at his own characterization of the jobs he helped to create:

If Bain (or another venture capital firm) did not step in to help failing companies, that may well have closed their doors, would the people that worked there then still have their jobs, or would jobs that were created due to the companies being turned around exist?
 
Some companies were doing alright until Bain leveraged them to the hilt and sucked off their working capital.

Name one of them.
 
If Bain (or another venture capital firm) did not step in to help failing companies, that may well have closed their doors, would the people that worked there then still have their jobs, or would jobs that were created due to the companies being turned around exist?

actually, venture capital is typically the term used for money infused into startups to launch them
equity capital is the common term used to describe the funds infused into a struggling company to give it the opportunity to turn around and succeed
i distinguish between the two because under romeny's span of leadership, the company's greatest earnings came from identifying underperforming companies, investing in them to reveal their true potential, then load up debt needed for expansion and soon after withdraw those loan monies as bain's investment and profits. that deprived the firms of the capital they acquired for one purpose - expansion - which bain then spent for another purpose: its own profits
when this happened, the company often filed bankruptcy; 22% of the time during romney's watch, and another 5% folded without going thru the bankruptcy process. of course, the lenders got hammered as well as the companies' employees, who lost their employment when the firms tanked
romney was excellent at generating profits for bain. creating - or retaining - jobs, not so much

so, if we were electing someone to exploit undervalued concerns, romney would be the obvious choice. if you want someone who will set the stage for job creation. he's not the guy
 
80% vs 20%... Way to put the pink shades on.
 
Essentially what company’s like these do is look for a business in trouble that they can get for a cut rate price, then try to fix them and make a profit off the now healthy company or resell them at a profit. You could equate this to house flippers buying a dump of a house to fix up and rentor resell at a profit. Usually it works out well but sometimes you find out the house needed more extensive repairs than you anticipated and you end up doing awhole lot of work for little if any profit.
 
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Essentially what company’s like these do is look for a business in trouble that they can get for a cut rate price, then try to fix them and make a profit off the now healthy company or resell them at a profit. You could equate this to house flippers buying a dump of a house to fix up and rentor resell at a profit. Usually it works out well but sometimes you find out the house needed more extensive repairs than you anticipated and you end up doing awhole lot of work for little if any profit.

let's continue that analogy and reveal romney's role in it
he would have borrowed much more money than he originally spent buying the real estate under the guise that he was going to fix up and expand that property
then bain would have taken that borrowed money to recoup its investment, resulting in the bankrupting of the entity he set up to handle the property. that would leave the lender with the unrenovated/unexpanded property as inadequate collateral to cover its loan. it would leave the painters and electricians and plumbers and carpenters and vendors whose costs were pointed to as the basis for the loan without any income on that project. but it would leave romney invigorated to go to the next property and do the same thing once more
the reality is romney sucked his profits out of the lenders. he only used the turnaround companies as his justification for getting them to lend the money he would thereafter take out as his profits, leaving the company a shell for the creditors to pick over
 
Exceedingly unlikely - companies that are doing well aren't exactly the model that venture capital is looking for - since they are more highly valued, they tend to be too expensive to turn the kind of profit on that justify the risk.

Venture capital firms invest in companies of for many different reasons. The only constant is that they think they can make a return on their investment.
 
let's continue that analogy and reveal romney's role in it
he would have borrowed much more money than he originally spent buying the real estate under the guise that he was going to fix up and expand that property
then bain would have taken that borrowed money to recoup its investment, resulting in the bankrupting of the entity he set up to handle the property. that would leave the lender with the unrenovated/unexpanded property as inadequate collateral to cover its loan. it would leave the painters and electricians and plumbers and carpenters and vendors whose costs were pointed to as the basis for the loan without any income on that project. but it would leave romney invigorated to go to the next property and do the same thing once more
the reality is romney sucked his profits out of the lenders. he only used the turnaround companies as his justification for getting them to lend the money he would thereafter take out as his profits, leaving the company a shell for the creditors to pick over

Baine covered it's ass so if things went south they didn't lose but most of the time everyone prospered. If Romney runs the US like Baine was run, profit, profit, profit, I am OK with that.
 
Baine covered it's ass so if things went south they didn't lose but most of the time everyone prospered. If Romney runs the US like Baine was run, profit, profit, profit, I am OK with that.
That is exactly what he would do: suck the life out of the working class and redistribute it to the .001%.
 
Bain is not a company that is set out to help other companies either, it is set up to make a profit. If it can make more profit by screwing others out of a job it will do it. If it can make more profit by helping other companies out, it will.

I'm not saying that is necessarily negative, but let's be honest in that Bain isn't out there to help companies either.

So it was simply luck that 80% of its customers showed improvement from the Bain assistance?
 
Venture capital firms invest in companies of for many different reasons. The only constant is that they think they can make a return on their investment.

As opposed to Obama and the gov't that simply do not care as long as it pleases some voters (or gets a campaign contribution). There is a big difference in "investing" your own funds and those taken from others by force.
 
So it was simply luck that 80% of its customers showed improvement from the Bain assistance?

as romney noted when he ran for governor after having left the CEO position at bain, he helped create 10,000 jobs in those surviving companies
 
That is exactly what he would do: suck the life out of the working class and redistribute it to the .001%.

says the guy who favors a candidate who is going to let the Bush Tax Cuts expire, which will bring tax rates up by 5% across the board... including those making under 50K/yr, against someone who wants to drop the marginal tax rate across the board for everyone, and eliminate capital gains taxes on those making under $200K/yr...
 
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