Tag Archives: vulture capitalism

The ethos of Mitt Romney: “make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone”

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“…Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of “creative destruction,” and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America’s rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.

“Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation’s wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He’s Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we’ll all end up paying for the acquisition.”

— Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

“Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time.”

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“…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…”

— Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

(Emphasis above, mine.)

The Bain Files: an illustration of why America is going broke?

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“So, what’s the worst aspect of Romney’s character? What does he know he has to run away from, even though he continually fails to do so? Simple: the perception that he’s a rich asshat who thinks he’s too good for the little people he deigns to rule. That he thinks so little of us that he demands the right to be our leader without giving anything in return.” — Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte, on why a Gawker document dump, showing Mitt Romney as a serial tax dodger, matters. | via: quickhits 

Maybe some people will finally see that the result of all these perfectly legal financial shenanigans, in all Romney’s / Bain Capital’s various schemes and loopholes and shelters and business practices, that THIS is why the United States is going broke, not because it would be nice to extend Social Security and Medicare for the next generation or provide health care for people.

The GOP has been rigging the system for the wealthy for decades. Mitt Romney is the chicken that’s come home to roost for the non-wealthy, evangelical voting base. These conservative social-issue rubes support the Republican candidate automatically, like zombies or Manchurian candidates, trusting these establishment politicians when they claim to actually care about stopping marriage equality (they can’t stop it!) or overturning Roe v. Wade (they won’t ever overturn it — have they EVER been close?). The Republicans don’t care about those things! They’re patronizing you. They just want more money, more deregulation, more income redistribution from the bottom to the top.

You want a thriving middle class in American again? STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Also: Stop watching Fox News. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.

Snap out of it.

Related: The Bain Files: will 954 pages of Bain’s financial documents reveal anything?

One half of all jobs in the U.S. today now pay less than $35,000 a year

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We were once a great country that proudly built things, exported goods, and earned a living wage—in large part because we had thriving labor unions. We also had a healthy public sector employment rate, which contributed to employment, the economy and America’s overall success. Over the past 30 years or more, we’ve been outsmarted with tax laws written to benefit the one percent, had our labor unions and government workers demonized by conservative ideology, and we were Bain Capitalized out of our manufacturing base—we were Bain Capitalized to death. The GOP and their wealthy benefactors have killed America’s middle class for nothing more than greed—and here we are today.

A report from NPR: How America’s Losing The War On Poverty:

According to a recent survey by The Associated Press, the number of Americans living at or below the poverty line will reach its highest point since President Johnson made his famous declaration of war on poverty in 1964.

Close to 16 percent of Americans now live at or below the poverty line. For a family of four, that’s $23,000 a year. On top of that, 100 million of us — 1 out of 3 Americans — manage to survive on a household income barely twice that amount. How is this poverty crisis happening?

[...] One half of all jobs in the U.S. today now pay less than $35,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that’s one of the lowest rates for American workers in five decades.

There’s a common perception that somebody who’s poor or living below the poverty level is lazy or simply living off government handouts. Edelman says the actual average poor person is working.

[...] Many economists say that when the economy does recover, a lot of the jobs that were lost won’t be coming back. That suggests the possibility of significantly high unemployment for a long time — maybe even a permanently large class of Americans who live in poverty. Blackwell says we can act to prevent that future. “And it’s not rocket science.”

“We know now that by 2018, 45 percent of all jobs in this nation will require at least an associate’s degree,” she says. “We could invest in the system of training — particularly focusing on community colleges and preparing people to go to four-year institutions and improving our high school education.”

“We actually have extraordinary infrastructure in this country, from the manufacturing base we once had,” she continues. “We need to retool it, we need to refit it, we need to make sure that it’s ready for the kind of advanced manufacturing that we’re seeing develop in other countries.”

What we don’t need is to be “Bain Capitalized” further — or more of those “great” ideas like outsourcing work that can be done locally in the public sector. To let Republicans find more ways to cut spending, more austerity cuts for 99% of us—just to give the wealthiest even more tax breaks—costs our society, and our people, in too many ways to count.


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Do you really want someone with “Bain Capital” business experience in the White House?

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Hasn’t America been Bain Capitalized enough?

Video: Romney sings: OFA ad

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Mitt Romney sings America the Beautiful (warning: Romney sings), accompanied by facts from his long career as a vulture capitalist and plutocratic elitist:


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Romney will eat America.

Romney’s wealth: cannibalize healthy companies, brutalize employees, walk away with all the money

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We keep hearing the same stories over and over again. And we’re supposed to believe that Mitt Romney and his Band of Merry Capitalists would be GOOD for America?

In the August issue of Vanity Fair, Nicholas Shaxson investigates Romney’s offshore accounts and tax loopholes. In the course of the investigation, he reports on another business which was cannibalized by Bain Capital and, under Romney’s management, whose employees were brutalized in the process — for the profit of a few:

“Dade Behring is a cause célèbre for Romney’s and Bain’s critics, and it illustrates the leverage problem clearly. In 1994, Bain bought Dade International, a medical-diagnostics company, then added the medical-diagnostics division of DuPont in 1996 and a German medical-testing company called Behring in 1997…

“[Bain] closed a Puerto Rico plant in 1998, a year after harvesting $7.1 million in local tax breaks aimed at job creation…”

“Then brutal cost cutting began. Bain cut R&D spending to an average of 8 percent of sales, a little more than half what its competitors were doing. Cindy Hewitt, Dade’s human-resources manager, remembers how the firm closed a Puerto Rico plant in 1998, a year after harvesting $7.1 million in local tax breaks aimed at job creation, and relocated some staff to Miami, then the company’s most profitable plant. Based on re­a­ssur­ances she had received from her superiors, she told those uprooting themselves from Puerto Rico that their jobs in Miami were safe for now—but then Bain closed the Miami plant. “Whether you want to call it misled, or lied, or manipulated, I do not believe they provided full information about what discussions were under way,” she says. “I would never want to be part of even unintentionally treating people so poorly.”

“[...] In 1999, generous pensions were converted into less generous benefits, wages were cut, and more staff members were laid off… “I have been dealing with pensions issues for over 25 years and I never saw anything like this,” recalls Stein. The spooked employees did not go to court. Stein says that, while breaking pension contracts like this was not unheard of, the practice at that time was “questionable,” adding that Dade may have saved $10 to $40 million from converting its pensions.

“Take $10 to $40 million squeezed from a pension pot, then use that to create new, rosier financial projections to borrow several times that amount, and then pay yourself a big special dividend from the borrowed funds…”

“The beauty—or savagery—of leverage is that it can magnify any and all cash-flow boosts, such as this one. Take $10 to $40 million squeezed from a pension pot, then use that to create new, rosier financial projections to borrow several times that amount, and then pay yourself a big special dividend from the borrowed funds, many times the size of the pension savings. That is just what Bain Capital did: the same month it converted the pensions, it created new financial projections as a basis to borrow an extra $421 million—from which Bain, its co-investor Goldman Sachs, and top Dade management extracted $365 million in dividends. According to Kosman, “Bain and Goldman—after putting down only $85 million … made out like bandits—a $280 million profit.” Dade’s debt rose to more than $870 million. Romney had left operational management of Bain that year, though his disclosures show that he owned 16.5 percent of the Bain partnership responsible for the Dade investment until at least 2001.

“Quite soon, however, a fragile Dade faced adverse conditions in the currency markets, and it had to start in effect cannibalizing itself, cutting into the core of its business. It filed for bankruptcy in August 2002 and Bain Capital departed… Nor was this an isolated incident: Kosman lists five other “formerly healthy” companies—Stage Stores, Ampad, GS Technologies, Details, and KB Toys—Bain helped drive into bankruptcy, while making big profits.”

The GOP / tea party base really needs to explain how Romney’s and Bain’s business model is in any way commendable, inspiring, or helpful to more than a handful of people who figured out how to get even richer than they were off the suffering of other people.

And if the GOP base can’t explain it, and if they plan to vote for Mitt Romney regardless of this knowledge, then these voters should admit they’re not concerned for America or its people — they’re only concerned about getting someone labeled “Republican” into the White House. They’re suicidal and want the rest of us to suffer with them.

What now, Teagelicals? Mitt Romney invested in a medical-waste firm that disposed of aborted fetuses

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Mother Jones reports this morning that while investigating government documents, such as SEC filings, they’ve discovered that not only did Romney have a direct hand with the company Stericycle, but that he did not leave Bain Capital in 1999 as both the campaign and Bain constantly assert:

“Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when theHuffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

“But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney’s exit from Bain.”

This is a BFD for values voters (you’d think, they claim!) — but they shouldn’t be surprised when pure, vulture capitalism is what they choose to support: if you can make a profit on something — outsourcing American jobs to China, offshoring your American money into foreign bank accounts to avoid taxes, or disposal of aborted fetuses, that’s the way America works. Capitalism! Profit! Romney is a savvy businessman! Job creators!

If it turns out that this isn’t going to be a problem for the Christian fundamentalists, let’s not hear another word about a woman’s LEGAL freedom of choice. Read the rest… 

Found image of ‘Stericycle’ in a Google image search. 

When Republicans destroy the middle class…

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When Romney’s Bain Capital created jobs outside the U.S. that could have been done here

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Caroline Bankoff at Daily Intel discusses the recent Washington Post article about how Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved American jobs overseas: [The Romney] campaign has responded with a statement criticizing the article as “fundamentally flawed”:

[The] story that does not differentiate between domestic outsourcing versus offshoring nor versus work done overseas to support U.S. exports.  Mitt Romney spent 25 years in the real world economy so he understands why jobs come and they go.

However, as Politico notes, the statement does not address one of the article’s main points, which is that Bain was directly involved with companies that created jobs outside the United States that could have been done here. Meanwhile, the New York Times has a piece (also based on Securities and Exchange Commission filings) detailing a number of instances in which Bain made a profit off of taking over companies that eventually went bankrupt. While some of the companies profiled may have simply been “too troubled to rescue” (or brought down by larger economic or industry trends), there are examples like steel manufacturer GS Industries… Continue reading »

Steel – YouTube – Kansas City’s GST Steel had been making steel rods for 105 years when Romney and his partners took control in 1993. They cut corners and extracted profit from the business at every turn, placing it deeply in debt. When the company eventually declared bankruptcy, workers not only lost their jobs but were denied their full pensions and health insurance, and the government was forced to step in and provide a bailout.


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Romney economics (why jobs come and why they go): creating wealth for a few at the expense of many.

Axelrod: “Scrutiny into Bain’s outsourcing record is no less than Romney deserves.”

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WANTED: Mitt Romney, outsourcer-in-chief. Source: thinkprogress.org

David Axelrod underlined the differences between the economic strategies of the two candidates for president in a conference call with reporters on Friday, according to Raw Story:

Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) spent years at the helm of the venture capital firm Bain Capital, where “his fundamental role was not to create jobs or better paying jobs, but to create maximum returns for him and his partners and investors.”

President Obama, however, has ushered the nation through one of its most perilous financial times and has launched programs designed to “insource” jobs, he said. Led by the stimulus of the auto industry, the U.S. is currently undergoing resurgence of domestic manufacturing. The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that small and midsize suppliers are among the companies currently feeling the effects of an industrial boom taking place across the country, according to a white paper issued by The Boston Company‘s Asset Management division.

Romney, said the Post, presided over Bain Capital’s investment in several firms that specialized in outsourcing U.S. jobs to “low-wage countries like China and India.”

[...] Asserting that the “central issue of our time is how to reubild economy so the milddle class is growing not shrinking,” [Axelrod] said that the scrutiny into Bain’s outsourcing record is no less than Romney deserves. “When you offer your experience in business as a road map of how you would govern as a president, people are going to examine exactly what it was you did.”

Romney economics: fire people for the simple crime of working in government

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NOTE TO ALL GOVERNMENT WORKERS: Mitt Romney hates you.

Jed Lewison points out the alarmingly stupid lie that Mitt Romney told his audience in Craig, Colorado last week:

That stimulus he put in place, it didn’t help private sector jobs, it helped preserve government jobs, and the one place we should have cut back was on government jobs. We have a 145,000 more government workers under this president. Let’s send them home and put you back to work!

Mitt Romney’s 145,000 claim isn’t accurate, but even if it were, it’s amazing that Romney believes firing tens of thousands of Americans would be good for the economy. The way Romney puts it, firing public sector workers would create jobs in the private sector, but that’s nonsense. The economy isn’t zero-sum game: You don’t need to fire someone to create a job. In fact, every time someone loses their job, no matter whether they are in the private or public sector, the economy as a whole takes a hit.

But Romney’s crazy economic theory is not even grounded in reality—under Obama, public sector employment has dropped, while private sector employment has grown. Obama signed the stimulus in February of 2009. Since then, public sector employment has dropped by 608,000.Private sector employment, meanwhile, has increased by 760,000. Even if you just look at federal employment (which is but a small fraction of the overall public sector workforce), only 26,000 jobs have been added, a slower pace of growth than in the private sector.

Just as Paul Krugman recently said, Obama’s actually “been the one who’s been doing what Republicans say is the right answer:”

Just over three years into Reagan’s first term, government jobs grew by 3.1 percent; at the same time during Obama’s tenure, they’ve been cut by 2.7 percent. Hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs have been shed in recent years. Government jobs also grew under President George W. Bush, which helped keep unemployment down during most of his two terms. “After there was a recession under Ronald Reagan, government employment went way up. It went up after the recessions under the first George Bush and the second George Bush.”

FACT: The only time government employment has gone DOWN during a recession has been under Obama.

Romney is using the old “Republican Strategy” on the GOP’s working class, trailer park dwelling base voters — all of whom have been conditioned to believe that if others have something they don’t (like a job with a living wage), it’s because those ‘others’ have taken something away from them personally. How else are you going to justify to people who will never be rich, who are living paycheck to paycheck, that the wealthiest need more money and they will need to get by on less?

It would seem Romney has some kind of personal vendetta for public sector workers. Mitt’s worth about $250 million and has said federal workers make more than him. Despite all of this, how many working and middle class conservatives will vote for him anyway? (ALL of them.)

Romney economics: when a fair wage for American workers is considered ‘greed’

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Fox News and Mitt Romney, as representatives for the one percent, rely on the Republican base voters to be not only dumb and uninformed, but self-hating as well. How else do you explain support (by people who aren’t wealthy) for the idea that fair wages and benefits for working Americans is “greed”? This morning, Ed Gillespie, an adviser to Mitt Romney, told Fox News host Chris Wallace that Scott Walker winning in Wisconsin would mean:

“I think the statement to big labor and to big government employee unions, government worker unions is that you can’t be too greedy,” Gillespie explained. “You need to understand that times are tough and a lot of these legacy costs that you imposed are due for some reforms and some restructuring.”

It’s interesting that Romney’s adviser calls it ‘greed’ when unions and workers want to preserve their wages and benefits. Especially when you consider the tactics of vulture capitalism, practiced by Mitt Romney during his time at Bain Capital, on long-term employees of companies acquired by Bain (fire them, hire some back at lower wages). Support for this kind of thinking will turn us into a third-world economy yet. Here’s proof: the WSJ reported this week that flat wages in the US are helping a manufacturing rebound:

The wage lag is a key factor contributing to the rebounding competitiveness of U.S. industry. A recent uptick in factory employment and the return of some production to U.S. shores from abroad both added jobs that probably otherwise wouldn’t exist. But sluggish wages also are squeezing workers’ incomes and spending. That, in turn, hurts retailers who target middle-income earners and restrains the vigor of the economic recovery. “The U.S. has held manufacturing wages in check while there has been strong wage growth in China and moderate wage growth in Mexico,” says economist Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, referring to two of the U.S.’s biggest lower-wage competitors.

China and Mexico’s wages are growing while U.S. wages are shrinking. Apparently that’s the only way corporations who got rich on American soil are willing to bring jobs back to American soil. Soon everyone will have a job, if they’re not too “greedy” and are willing to work for $1.00 a day.

Oh, and of course this is not greed.