That’s ridiculous. We object to rules that make capitalism less productive, not ones would that make it more productive.
I am so sick of this trite identification of predatory capitalism with industrial development. Heck, Stalin did all right without investment funds. Capitalists of his time would probably have left Russia agrarian.
How did Hitler do?
Lost the war, committed suicide. Possibly because he sucked up to the investor class too much.
No, seriously, my point was that even state socialists can do pretty well at tech. We don’t need Wall Street in its present degenerate form.
That doesn’t really answer my question, though. It takes lots of different people, each playing some particular role, to make a successful business. Why is it only the venture capitalist who gets to don the mantle of “job creator”?
Look, if Romney said that he made a lot of money for his investors, no one could argue. If he was in the running for a CEO job this would be the only thing that counts.
But he is running for President, and your average voter is going to care a lot more about their jobs than his investors making more money. By giving himself credit for all jobs created, even after Bain sold the company, and not subtracting out the jobs lost, he is being dishonest. I am quite sure that Bain knows exactly the employment level at their companies when they sold them. They can easily find the the numbers now. That they are not reporting the job gains due to their work makes me think that they were actually small or negative.
Romney’s duty might have been to fire workers to make his investors money, and he did it. He is welcome to say that during a debate and see how it flies.
I don’t want to jump in too much on this until I’ve learned a bit more. I’ve only seen the “When Romney Came to Town” video and don’t know much more about it than that. As a a matter of fact, I came in to this thread looking for more information about the topic.
I do want to say that the quoted post isn’t a rebuttal of anything. The thread is about Romney and not Obama. And if your case is that Romney didn’t do anything wrong, then neither did Obama so the reference to “apologists” would be off the mark as well.
The big question I had after watching the video was whether or not the companies that were bought and sold by Bain Capital were profitable before hand. If they were profitable before Bain Capital bought them, why did they need to take the actions they did?
I understand now. This is a rhetorical strategy to give nonsense assignments? It isn’t working. Why don’t you just state your argument plainly?
Here’s a nice report on how Romney ruined a steel company. The workers lost their jobs, their benefits, took a $400/mo cut in their pensions, and their pension fund had to be bailed out to the tune of $44 million from the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Buy a company, put it in debt, put incompetent managers in charge, drain the pension fund, declare bankruptcy, then skip out of town after handing a bill to the government.
Of course, libertarians believe without such antics we’d never have developed a telecommunications system. :rolleyes:
I personally think the Solyndra loans were a mistake, and would rather provide incentives through the tax code (a carbon tax in particular) rather than handing out money from the government.
That said, Solyndra was much closer to venture capitalism than a leveraged buyout, no? I don’t think anybody is mad about the VC activities from Bain, just the LBOs.
Personally, I don’t really give a shit about Bain and am pretty well pleased that Romney will win the nomination (not because I think he can’t win but because he at least has a history of being reasonable) even though I won’t vote for him. I just love the irony of him being attacked by the GOP for doing exactly what free-market evangelists would have him do.
I think you are way off base here.
Noone is faulting Romney for trying to save a company and failing or investing in a startup that didn’t work out (which would be a closer analogy, not that I agree with the notion that the Dept of energy should act as an energy venture capital fund with taxpayer money).
People are wondering out loud if Romney actually engaged in the sort of society impoverishing activity (costing society $1000 so that I personally can make $100) that he is being accused of. Did he buy companies and sell off crown jewels (and leave the carcasss to rot)? Did he improve his bottom line by underfunding pensions (and give teh semblance of solvency to cash out at higher prices)? Did he improve his bottom line by loading up a company with debt (and then cash out)? Did he improve his bottom line by firing a lot of people (and run out the door before the low staffing level had a visible impact on profitability)?
To be fair, each of these things are tools used by turnaround artists, but they are also the weapons of corporate raider. And we can argue about whether corporate raiding was a net boon to the economy but we should distinguish between the two. I think many people would find the distinction relevant.
People have started to distinguish between rich folks who got rich by adding value to society by creating something new (like Steve Jobs) or turning around a failing company (like Steve Jobs) and those who make their money by shuffling around money (wall street securitizations) or off the misery of others. If Romney is a mixed bag who did all of the above then fine but I think his business background loses some of its appeal to some folks and he may start to look a lot more opportunistic which reinforces the whole flip flop criticism.
If you ask an entrepreneur with an idea, he will tell you that the biggest problem is finding capital. Ask a venture captalist with money to invest, they will tell you the biggest problem is finding a good idea.
Also venture capitalists have become more involved in teh process than they used to be. A lot of them set up incubators where the venture capitalist contribute more than just money, they contribute managerial expertise, help find talent, and negotiate contracts, etc.
I think that Romney was probably agnostic on how he amde money. If it was by adding value or turning around a troubled mismanaged company, then fine. If it was by breaking up companies and having the capital reallocated more efficiently to a factory in India, that was fine too. If it meant gutting a company and leaving the PBGC with the bill, I don’t think he would have hesitated to take that payday.
I think people would be somewhat turned off by a Mr. Wall Street and if you can make Romney look like Gordon Gecko, you have made him toxic to some voters on both sides of the aisle. Free market fundamentalists have a tiger by the tail. They have tried to indoctrinate their more religious base with free market principles but they have only adopted them to the extent that black people bear most of the brunt of implementing those principles. When white people start bearing most of the brunt of free market principles, then those principles stop being as central to the platform.