Mitt Romney,GOP Nominee? Economic Hitman!

As former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney bid for the Republican presidential nomination is basic a fait accompli, his rapacious history as a corporate vulture while a member of private equity company Bain Capital has been brought up time and time again by his adversary former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrinch and others.

Romney dismisses these attacks from his Republican rivals, yet he flips the coin when President Obama or anyone associated with his CREEP (Committee to RE-Elect the President) with claims that of pitting “ambition” v “envy”; once again GOP code speak for class warfare. I must have been asleep for the past 3 years and didn’t hear President Obama slander the Middle Class for dreaming, but not being able to achieve two basic tenants of the American Dream – upward mobility and increased standard of living from the previous generation.

Incidentally, the US ranks #10 in the Achieving the American Dream index; behind a lot European countries, the same European countries that good ol’ Mitt derides Obama for emulating (which is a god damn lie anyway!).

PRIVATE EQUITY SHENANIGANS

Private Equity Capitalists are some of the shadiest capitalists, because they are essentially corporate raiders who rip apart someone’s dream, make it lean and mean (hopefully) and deploy the company back into the marketplace more efficient and competitive, oh, and they earn a boatload of cash in fees; that’s the best case.

Many times corporate raiders investigate a company’s balance sheet and determine that its parts are worth more than its whole. Thus they go about acquiring and then summarily dismantling someone’s dream (as ALL companies worthy of a corporate raider’s interest started out as someone’s dream that they brought to life through blood, sweat and tears), selling off the assets (equipment, real estate, buildings, intellectual property, etc.), but what they can’t get rid of (and boy would they like to) is the obligations (like debts and pensions).

Worst case scenario, a corporate raider buys a company sells off all the assets (at a premium), pink slips the workforce, and declares bankruptcy in regards to the pension obligations (if there are any) and other debts. Oh, and the raider makes a boatload of cash again.

Most corporate raiding is done through leverage buyouts (LBOs). A technique that was perfected in the 1980s, in which corporate raiders use massive amounts of debt to acquire controlling interest in a company… mind you, this is debt that they are NOT on the hook for personally; the company the bought by the corporate raider is responsible for the massive and many times crushing debt load.

ECONOMIC HIT MAN

In John Perkins’ explosive and controversial book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman“, he introduced a morally ambiguous international businessman who set up countries, not companies, for the fall. Unless Romney voluntarily discloses (or someone does that actual research) how many companies he bought and bankrupted or bought and “trimmed” (i.e. axed 100s of employees), then we have to assume the he did more harm than good during his time at Bain, because that was when American companies were all the run and the outsourcing of jobs was just getting started, as that term – outsourcing – hadn’t even been coined yet.

The revelations that Romney has Cayman Islands bank accounts (probably more sheltered accounts elsewhere and unnamed) lends credence that he is real good at making money for himself, but it doesn’t – nor does any of his business success – indicate that he knows how to better handle the economy from the Oval Office.