The news is finally getting out about Mitt Romney. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz on msnbc yesterday called him exactly what he was, a Job Cremator:
“Mitt Romney, I think, is more of a job cremator than a job creator,” Schultz said. She added: “He was a corporate buyout specialist at Bain Capital. He dismantled companies. He cut jobs. He forced companies into bankruptcy and he outsourced jobs and sent jobs overseas. That’s not a record to write home about, that’s not a record to be proud of, and it’s something voters need to know.”
Balloon Juice
Think Progress describes how it worked:
Bain’s modus operandi was to invest in companies, leverage them up with debt, and then sell them off for scrap, allowing Bain’s investors to walk away with huge profits while the companies in which Bain invested wound up in bankruptcy, laying off workers and reneging on benefits.
Last week, Reuters profiled one company, Worldwide Grinding Systems, that went belly up after Bain invested in it. The company not only lost 750 jobs, but the federal government had to come in to bail out its pension fund, while Bain walked away with millions in profits.
Think Progress
Now that noted left wing rag, The Wall Street Journal, has looked at the data:
The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999, to see how they fared during Bain's involvement and shortly afterward.
Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost.
Another finding was that Bain produced stellar returns for its investors—yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains.
Some of those companies, too, later ran into trouble. Of the 10 businesses on which Bain investors scored their biggest gains, four later landed in bankruptcy court.
Wall Street Journal
They stripped the value out of companies and appropriated it, leaving carcassses behind. Hyena capitalism.
The Pro-Gingrich PAC is going up on the air in South Caronlina with ads about the plundering of businesses by Romney:
Thanks to a $5 million donation from a wealthy casino owner, a group supporting Newt Gingrich plans to place advertisements in South Carolina this week attacking Mitt Romney as a predatory capitalist who destroyed jobs and communities, a full-scale Republican assault on Mr. Romney’s business background.
The advertisements, a counterpunch to a campaign waged against Mr. Gingrich by a group backing Mr. Romney, will be built on excerpts from a scathing movie about Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney once ran. The movie, financed by a Republican operative opposed to Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold.
“We had to load up the U-Haul because we done lost our home,” one woman says.
snip
“His business success comes from raiding and destroying businesses — putting people out of work, stealing their health care,” said Rick Tyler, a senior adviser to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, which recently bought the film, “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” after groups backing two other Republican candidates passed up opportunities to use it.
NY Times
Gingrich is calling it what it is, plunder:
"I don't think a Milton Friedman or a Hayek would say to you, rich guys have to go and rip off companies and leave a wreckage behind," Gingrich said in an interview after a town hall appearance here Sunday night. "I think that's plundering. I don't think that's capitalism."
WaPo, The Plum Line, Greg Sargent, quoting New Gingrich (with link)
We can debate whether capitalism is plundering at its heart some other day. For now, I like seeing Gingrich's attacks on Romney.
And there's last week's MoveOn ad in New Hampshire:
"Mitt Romney Doesn't Care About Jobs; He Cares About Money!"
I worked in a steel mill in Kansas City for over 32 years. Then Mitt Romney and Bain Capital came in a took the place over and eventually shut it down. We lost our jobs; they made millions. Businesses, they were all gone. Jobs we'll never see again.
Mitt Romney wants to call himself a “job creator”? Mitt Romney doesn’t care about jobs; he cares about money.
More background data here:
Mitt Romney, Job-Killer. More From MoveOn.
Spread the word with Facebook, with friends, on blogs: the Republicans are going to nominate a Job Cremator. Give them the facts.
After the Republicans destroyed the economy, Barack Obama has presided over the creation of millions of jobs. The economy is slowing recovering, too slow, but the Republicans put us into almost a depression. Romney epitomizes Republican Wall Street tactics that destroyed the economy and impovrished American workers.
GoBama!
Update I: Bonus: Gingrich smacking Romney:
“Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation would find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.”
Fun to watch with or without popcorn!
A super PAC backing GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is set to unveil a $3.4 million ad blasting Mitt Romney as Bain Capital’s corporate “raider” who “destroyed” the livelihoods of “thousands of Americans and their families.”
http://thinkprogress.org/...