Watching some maven being interviewed on Fox. He said 21% of Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008 have since changed their party affiliation to Independent or Republican. What he didn’t say was that 40% of voters who have died since 2008 have changed their affiliation to Democrat. There is probably going to be a lot of cheating this year. I assume that one of the points of dropping the prosecution of the Philly Black Panthers was to let everyone know the coast is clear. Romney (I assume it will be he) is going to need big margins in the popular vote to win.
Of course no one is cocky on the Right nowadays, though the Romney campaign appears to be complacent. Maybe they will get their act together in time. Romney’s central flaw, other than his lack of political principles and his record in Massachusetts, is his personal decency. He is a nice guy and he is going to be up against thugs. Perhaps he can rise to the occasion and become more thuggish himself. We can hope.
Romney shouldn’t have run nasty ads attacking Gingrich, but Gingrich and Perry have behaved disgracefully in responding by attacking Romney over Bain Capital. Romney’s record at Bain is the best thing going for him. His defenses of free enterprise, in unguarded moments, have been very good. Yet Gingrich et al have made dishonest assertions about what Bain did, and about the private-equity industry, and by so doing have helped Obama (Gingrich’s self-serving rationalization that his attacks are preparation for the Obama onslaught to the contrary). Perry’s remarks about “vulture capital” were stupid. He and Gingrich remind me of Ann Coulter — quick to say things that harm their side but that benefit them personally. It’s no wonder that conservatives are said to be rallying to support Romney.
All of this makes me miss Herman Cain.
Of course in the general election I am going to vote enthusiastically for whichever one of these highly imperfect candidates will be running against Obama.
The intrade board on the right side of this page is a very valuable guide to the state of play.
Here is the main event:
Dems win presidency in 2012 50.1 51.9
Clearly, it is still a coin flip. Ceterus Paribus, if the election were held next Tuesday, Hussein would loose, but things can happen that could change the picture between now and next November. E.g. an attack on Iran, or the US economy really takes off. The latter seems unlikely, but the former is within Hussein’s control.
Fortunately the nomination seems to be wrapped up. Gingrich was at 5% a few days ago, but I think he is more hurt by the Bain conniption than is Mitt. Oh yes, Perry is dead. This one seems to be over.
Gingrich 2012 Repub. nominee 2.3 2.9
Perry 2012 Repub. nominee 0.9 1.3
Romney 2012 Rep. nominee 87.0 87.8
I am anything but cocky. To tell you the truth this country is facing such an enormous challenge I am wondering if even the Republican winner is up to it.
But then melancholy seems to be part of my nature.
While Romney isn’t my favorite I heard something encouraging about him – 3rd person.
According to said person Romney said that if elected he intends to be a “1 term President” – making hard choices and cuts that are guaranteed to make enemies.
Wishful thinking or based in fact?
I do not know.
On Cain – I was starting to get interested in him but if he was knocked out by these revelations better now than in the general election.
Of the candidates running I think I like Santorum but am resigned to Romney.
In his defense he seems to know the difference between a million, billion, and trillion, a refreshing change for Washington. And he did a miracle turnaround for the Salt Lake Olympics.
It does look like the Institutional Republicans have successfully imposed Romney as the nominee. Given that until recent and tentative recantations his stands were only marginally different from Obama’s, that he has never, ever, stood up and fought against Democrats, and that he has contempt for 75% of the Republican party which is heartily returned; the nomination is a sign that Romney’s campaign is going to make Bob Dole’s look like the Mongols attacking Russia. He will lose, and the Institutionals are perfectly happy with that so long as conservatives are held at bay within the Republican party.
Bill Brandt Says @
January 15th, 2012 at 1:32 am
According to said person Romney said that if elected he intends to be a “1 term President” – making hard choices and cuts that are guaranteed to make enemies.
That came from the transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s show Friday. Limbaugh heard that he had said that. Absent verification and witnesses, or Romney saying it himself publicly with attribution; I consider it to be Maskirova. It would be totally at odds with his 20 year political career, 4 of which were as governor and the rest as a candidate for one office or another.
The Institutional Republicans want to have a Republican party without having to listen to those nasty, plebian Conservatives and TEA Party types. I say that as of November 7, we should let them have their wish.
Subotai Bahadur
I was a fan of Herman Cain until all the girl problems. Then I was just mad at him. Did he really think that crap wouldn’t get uncovered? Why even run for President? What a waste of time.
Outside of that, it will be Romney and he will lose.
Jonathan,
how your assertion that Romney “is a nice guy” correspond to your next paragraph, where you say he shouldn’t run nasty ads against Gingrich? The guy has 2 decades of political aspirations, judging by Wiki article on him (I know, Wiki is not highly reputable; show me a better one) – I don’t think being “thuggish” is something new to him. He finally succeeded in MA; what was his record there? Rather than judging him to be “a nice guy”, I’d say he is a nice guy to Dems. We already have a guy like him in NY – Mike Bloomberg.
About Bain. I know nothing about investment companies and form my opinion by articles in popular sources – in that I am similar to majority of voters. This is what I read in Wiki:
“Bain Capital’s acquisition of Ampad exemplified a deal where it profited handsomely from early payments and management fees, even though the subject company itself ended up going into bankruptcy.[40][53][60] Dade Behring was another case where Bain Capital received an eightfold return on its investment, but the company itself was saddled with debt and laid off over a thousand employees before Bain Capital exited (the company subsequently went into bankruptcy, with more layoffs, before recovering and prospering).[54] Bain was among the private equity firms that took the most fees in such cases.[48][53] Romney said in retrospect: “It is one thing that if I had a chance to go back I would be more sensitive to. It is always a balance. Great care has got to be taken not to take a dividend or a distribution from a company that puts that company at risk. [Having taken a big payment from a company that later failed] would make me sick, sick at heart.”[48]
If what it says about buyout of Ampad and Dade Behring is true, Romney’s quote at the end sound disingenuous, at the very least.
Can you explain, please?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/what-is-private-equity-all-about-anyway.php
-Romney is a nice guy as politicians go. He seems to have an orderly and honorable personal life. He hasn’t stolen elections.
-Who knows how much of Cain’s “girl problems” was based on real events and how much was lies and unfounded insinuations. We don’t even know what most of the accusations were. He could have handled the attacks better, but if all he did was have an affair or two I don’t think that’s very bad in the scheme of things. As Thomas Sowell said about Gingrich, we are electing a president not a saint. All of the candidates have strengths and flaws, and given a choice I prefer Cain’s combination of strengths and flaws over those of the other candidates. I am sure Cain would have been a better president than Obama. Unlike Obama and most of the other candidates, Cain has an impressive record of success in life, and not just success but success in turning around failing organizations.
-Wikipedia is so unreliable on controversial subjects that I don’t think it’s worth discussing. The point about private-equity firms is that they look for companies that are mismanaged and that have potential to be turned around by taking them over and reorganizing them. As with any investment strategy some private-equity projects will fail and the companies involved will go out of business. But those companies might have failed eventually anyway, and you have to evaluate the strategy by its overall results rather than selected data points. Overall Bain was highly successful in that enough of its projects were big winners to more than compensate for the failures. Otherwise Bain wouldn’t have been profitable. If you say that a company like Bain may only take over companies if it doesn’t fire anybody then there will be more unemployment overall, because many of the mismanaged companies will eventually fail anyway and the ones that could have become successful and expanded after reorganization won’t be changed.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked Cain – a lot. But the fact is that when faced with the media scrutiny about the alleged affairs, he wilted like the spinach I sauteed last night. It was pathetic. Clearly he did something and would rather quit than talk about it. Back to what I said, if he wasn’t ready for the media scrutiny (and imagine how bad it would have been if he had been the nominee!) why waste everybody’s time and energy?
But isn’t the idea that is said to differentiate Bain from other private equity companies is their partially buying into the failing Co so they lose or gain with the Co they are reorganizing? So their profit comes more from the Co’s profits rather than from the consulting/management fees? And that if the Co they manage fail they loose their investment, too? I am not bothered by unemployment angle – it is inevitable when reorganization occur – but if Bain indeed took huge profit from Ampad and Dade Behring while these companies were saddled with debt and went bankrupt – I think that would be contrary to stated principle.
I know Wiki is not a reliable source. Do you know a reliable source that can explain in a plain comprehensible language the issue with Ampad and Dade Behring?
If we are to believe the narrative that Romney is so inevitable and such a nice guy, why did he just challenge the petitions of Rick Santorum in Illinois on Friday? Meanwhile, despite well-publicized defects in the Rick Perry and Ron Paul petitions here, he didn’t bother to challenge those. In short, he’s happy to see the conservative vote split so that it is easier for him to look like a winner with only 30% support, but didn’t want to risk actually losing delegates to Santorum.
Note that delegate petition challenges have been rare since the 1976 nomination fight between Reagan and Ford. Although the Santorum delegates were vulnerable to a challenge for lack of sufficient signatures since they were largely Herman Cain supporters and organized too late in the process after Cain suspended his campaign, there seemed to be a “gentleman’s agreement” with the Romney campaign to not challenge. Instead, by the Friday afternoon deadline for challenges, the Romney campaign was evidently worried enough about the Santorum campaign to risk adverse publicity by knocking them off the ballot.
On the other hand, they obviously didn’t perceive Ron Paul or Rick Perry to be a serious threat. Perry didn’t file slates of delegates in Illinois, nor did Huntsman. Ron Paul’s supporters had done their delegate petitions properly, so only his “top line” petition was vulnerable – but that doesn’t affect delegates. It’s a beauty contest, like a straw poll, and therefore has no impact other than publicity. If the Romney crowd was concerned about valid petitions, they would have challenged both the Perry and Paul petitions. Instead, they were just worried about losing delegates to Santorum, and wanted to weaken the image of his campaign in the other early primary states. Nice guy, eh? Is this what Illinois voters want? As you may recall, Obama rose to power in Illinois through petition challenges. The end justifies the means to maintain the myth of inevitability.
SurgeUSA:
re: Romney’s inevitability – IMAO has this to say.
WRT Cain we don’t know what the real story is. The attacks on him were effective because most people use a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” heuristic and the attackers exploited this decisionmaking tendency. Once enough people were discussing the accusations evidence became unnecessary and thus the attacks were successful. I thought Gary Condit was guilty of murder because he acted guilty, and look how that turned out.
Tatyana – Subotai – It is said that the Beltway Republicans want Romney and his nomination is inevitable.
But it is the people’s votes – not the beltway Republicans – who determine the nominee.
And as Tatyana’s linked article mentioned, he is still about 1,200 votes short of the nomination ;-)
But money means a lot in elections – it isn’t always the determinate factor but it is an important factor.
And Romney’d opposition is split 3-4 ways.
Ifd all the conservatives could agree on an “UnRomney” then he would be beaten. \\OTOH he may surprise us 0- in a good way.
Dirty politics? When has it not been dirty?
Gary Condit is not guilty? ;)
“Gary Condit is not guilty? ;)”
They have the guy who was a transient.
The Bain story is pretty well discussed in the WSJ and NRO, both more reliable than Wiki. Wiki is OK as long as it is not a political topic.
Robert Novak’s book, “Prince of Darkness,” is very critical of Gingrich as Speaker. He went for the money right after being elected. His talents in getting the Republican majority are not very applicable to the presidency.
We had better potential candidates but they declined to run. Mitch Daniels, because of his wife, Paul Ryan because his kids are little.
If Romney does a good, very good, job of discussing these accusations about capitalism, he should be OK. I don’t think people trust Obama anymore on economics. Another example that Romney probably can’t use is Eastman Kodak which is circling the drain because film is obsolete and the board used poison pill bylaws to keep raiders like Bain away. The result is 70,000 jobs lost. THe companies that went bankrupt with Bain were going bankrupt anyway. Flourishing companies don’t attract PE firms.
Bill Brandt Says @
January 15th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
But it is the people’s votes – not the beltway Republicans – who determine the nominee.
That varies. Here in Colorado in 2010, the TEA Party candidate won the Republican Governor’s nomination fair and square at both the state convention and the subsequent primary. The response of the Colorado Republican Party was to insert one of their own [Tom Tancredo] as the Constitution Party candidate, have him funded by the Republicans and to underfund the TEA Party Republican candidates at all levels, and deliberately throw the election to the Democrat rather than support their own candidate. It is the Institutionals operating in conjunction with the Democrats and their media who have been attacking every Conservative. Romney gets a pass. Conservatives are openly opposed by both parties.
Yes, you have to be able to appeal to the Independents, but there is an assumption that you have your own base nailed down. If 10% of the Republican conservative base is disgusted enough to undervote the ticket, Romney cannot win. The Institutionals have been and are pushing to cram an unacceptable candidate [note: most conservatives will accept less than perfection in a candidate, so long as it appears that they will fight the Democrats. Romney collaborates with Democrats at every turn, and has for 20 years.] on 3/4 of the party. There is not going to be the 100% unity needed on our side to win. Romney will lose. And the Institutional Republicans are good with that.
I know that if Romney is the nominee, the three voters at my house will be changing our registration to “unaffiliated” after the convention; the Institutional Republican party having no desire for conservatives except as serfs. Since we have no influence on candidate selection or what the Republicans do once in office, it makes no sense to stay there. Interestingly enough, I am not the only one who has come up with that idea, and a number of people I know around the country have the same idea.
Subotai Bahadur
THe companies that went bankrupt with Bain were going bankrupt anyway.
Probably. But the question I asked – did Bain/Romney paid themselves handsomely for the privilege of driving those companies to bankruptcy (out of those Co’s remaining money)?
Tatyana,
You are absolutely correct. Bain (and Romney) profited handsomely from the companies they bankrupted with the debt they piled on.
It is disingenuous, to say the least, for the pro-Romney gang to take the position that criticizing the bottom feeders in the leveraged buyout business is to be against capitalism. It is not anti-capitalism, but disdain for thoise who create little or no wealth but enrich themselves by lottling the wealth created by the hard work of others.
As for the jobs Romney created – Staples, Dominos, Sports Authority – they are dead-end, retail, minimum wage jobs, and the jobs he destroyed are largely value adding manufacturing jobs.
Bill Wadell & Tatyana. If you know whereof you speak, I would appreciate references.
My knowledge of equity investing, whether as venture capital, private equity, or leveraged buy-outs, derives from years of personal professional experience. Nobody trying to make money in that business considers a deal to have been profitable or well done if the business does not thrive and cannot be sold, whether as an IPO to the public or to a strategic or financial buyer, for a good multiple of what was paid for it. That said, business is far less predictable and far less stable than it looks like from the outside.
I have seen enough companies burst into flame and die within the space of a few months to convince me that equity investment is the financial equivalent of bomb disposal. Cross the wires once and you are dead. The fees and dividend payments are barely enough to cover the costs of a disaster. Do you have any idea of what the legal fees are when an investment goes bankrupt 90 days after closing. That was a rhetorical question, I am not expecting an answer.
Critiquing Bain’s record after the fact is like critiquing a surgeon’s patient’s mortality. You don’t know what the patient was like before the surgeon meet him. Further, claiming that the bankruptcy of a company that occurs after a change in control reflects on the former owner is just absurd. Your record ends on the day you turn over the keys, unless you defrauded the buyer. The day after the closing, the buyer can cross the wires, and as I wrote, it is impressive to see how fast the whole thing can go under.
Been there, done that, got the closing binders and the deal toys.
Robert,
I suggest you investigate the series of events surrounding Bain’s investment in AMPAD: The investment bankers put $5 million into the deal, took AMPAD debt from $11 million up to $400 million – a fourth of that new debt going to pay the investment banker. $5 million in, $100 million out, and the company ending up broke, 200 employees laid off and a plant closed. Another chunk of the $400 million went toward buying an AMPAD competitor – and promptly closing the competitor’s plant and laying off 185 people. That deal jacked up the revenues of AMPAD, making it appear more valuable, in turn making the $100 million to the investment banker possible.
You can make this stuff sound as good as you want, but it is nothing more than leeching off of other people’s wealth. Bain had no interest in turning AMPAD into a going concern – just one that looked good enough on poapaer to reap short term 20X return.
While not a Bain deal, your high sounding version of the leveraged buyout business crumbles when the story of Simmons Mattress is told: A going concern from the start, bought and sold 5 times, with the company debt going from $164 million to $1.3 billion by the time these leaders of capitalism were finished – with $750 million of that debt going to the investment bankers. In the end, the company was bankrupt and hundreds of people laid off, plants closed just to be able to make the debt payments. And not one of the investment bankers contributing anything to the serious long ter management of the business.
The people who create and build companies like AMPADand Simmons are the capitalists – and it is shameful to assert that anyone who does not support the destroyers of their businesses is anti-capitalism.
Don’t forget Holder promising to fight any State’s efforts to require ID to vote. Setting the stage for incredibly massive fraud, nationwide in every swing state and on a scopr not seen since 1960 if not long before… these things don’t happen in a vacuum.
Unless and until the GOP announces its plans to have squadrons of lawyers and watchers in thousands of precincts and to scour voting lists in early voting states–the new way to steal elections is via early and absentee voting–I will assume they are just playing to finish second and my wallet will stay closed as I can no longer afford the useless gestures I made on McCain’s behalf in 2008.
Robert, I suggest you read ALL my comments in this thread before making demands on me.
This discussion of Romney’s Bain experience seems as relevant as a discussion of Obama’s community organizing experience. Both activities have their unseemly sides; befriending terrorist murderers like Ayres ain’t beanbag, either. But what is relevant to my decision is the arena in which each chose to compete. AMPAD may or may not have been a bad deal. But nobody forced me to pay for it. The same can’t be said about Solyndra.
And the focus of TEA activity in this election should be down ticket. The further down the better. This is where the ultimate power lies, just as Reid and Pelosi did more damage than Obama.
Robert,
What do I see at this moment:
-an average member of general public (me), not terribly knowledgeable about investment or private equity companies wants to make sense of the accusations against Romney-led Bain. I had no preconceived opinion on the subject (ask me about compact fluorescents or ADA instead), wanted to understand, in good faith, what Bain/Romney is accused of and how solid these accusations are.
-I made a quick search (just like majority of voters will), found the most succinct and written in comprehensive language article, that happens to be in Wiki. Found there a paragraph related directly to history of acquisition Ampad and Dade Behring.
-Came here to ask for opinion of this article from people who know much more on the subject than do – note, asked politely and still in good faith.
-In response I got the following
a) Wiki is not a reliable source (same thing I said when I was asking questions in my original comment). No alternative source was proposed, although I asked for it.
b) Suggestion that my concern is with “lost jobs” and proceeding with counter-argument against this strawman
c)a link to a long-winded article describing in general terms what private equity companies do, with no information relative to specific question about Ampad and Dade B. and whether the Wiki version re: Bain behavior in history of their bankruptcy is correct
d)two instances of what could be described as “public loves the winner”, no matter what methods that winner uses and w/o analysis of its failures: 1.suggestion that only overall rate of successful turnovers is important in evaluating Bain performance; 2. suggestion that companies that Bain brought into bankruptcy would be bankrupt anyway, effectively freeing Bain from any wrongdoing
e) your comment, Robert, readdressing my own question back at me.
Dry result: so far nobody except Bill Waddell has answered my inquiry with specific numbers and explanation – which confirms the conclusion in Wiki article.
I do have sincere interest and a wish to make sense of the polemic, as objectively as possible, so I did spend a bit more time on googling the issue than an average voter will.
I found this post, containing this graph, originated, as I understand, at Boston Globe who did investigation in 2007. [The direct link to BG’ article no longer works]. Robert, do you have some other interpretation of the date presented? Please share.
Mrs Davis: Ampad and Dade B is important in evaluation of Romney because they show his ethics in dealing with other people money – while enriching themselves int the process.
That is directly relevant to our choice of presidential candidacy.
It is true that private equity firms sometimes put lipstick on the pig and convince potential buyers that the animal is truly beautiful and can sing lovely songs…a couple of years later, it turns out that the pig really is bitter ugly and is squealing is just annoying, moreover, its market value is now a lot less than they paid for it.
But if this happens too often, then the PE firm is going to have a hard time finding buyers for its future deals
I think it is fair to ask about how good a job Bain did in managing the firms it acquired–this is a competence issue rather than an ethical issue, but is still important. If the following is true:
“As GS Industries sought to cut costs, it hired line managers with no experience in the steel industry, workers said. One had worked at Walmart; many others came straight out of the military.
“He would come up with some of the stupidest damn ideas that you ever seen,” the former steelworker Linson said of one supervisor, a retired Air Force colonel.
Paperwork proliferated. Cost-cutting efforts backfired. Managers skimped on purchases of everything from earplugs to spare motors and scaled back routine maintenance. Machines began to break down more often, and with parts no longer in stock a replacement could take days to arrive.
Labor costs spiked as managers revamped work schedules with little understanding of how the plant actually operated. Linson says he picked up an entire shift of overtime each week because his managers didn’t realize that a furnace needed a full eight hours to heat up to operating temperature.”
…then it does not speak well for Bain management.
Let’s not forget, though, that whatever warts Romney may have, he is infinitely preferable to the extremely destructive Barack Obama.
Tatyana, It is only relevant if there is something that indicates he would be less preferable than Baraq Hussein Obama. Even if the worst that is alleged is true, David is correct, whatever warts Romney may have, he is infinitely preferable to the extremely destructive Barack Obama. I’d prefer another choice but you have to choose from the candidates the parties present you.
I think at this point I would vote for the devil over Obama…
Mrs. Davis,
Romney is not a Republican candidate yet. See my link to IMAO’s post above.
At this stage we still evaluate our options. And if H.Cain was rejected for his ethical violations, I don’t see how same criteria is not being applied to Romney; moreover I think pocketing huge money by destroying livelihood of others and ruining perfectly good manufacturing companies just for own profit, contrary to stated intent is much more dangerous in a candidate than marital infidelity.
No alternative source was proposed, although I asked for it.
I suggested NRO and the Wall Street Journal, both of whom have written repeatedly about the Bain connection of Romney. There is also the story of his rescue of the Winter Olympics,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/287707/battle-bain-capital-michael-walsh
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/288162/bain-capital-and-little-steel-mill-could-patrick-brennan
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/287565/romney-derangement-syndrome-avik-roy
.com/agenda/288074/jeffrey-friedman-bain-capital-and-real-rationale-capitalism-reihan-salam
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/287739/re-battle-bain-capital-nicole-gelinas
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/288004/keach-hagey-covering-bain-capital-reihan-salam
http://www.nationalreview.com/primary-event/280209/romney-bain-capital-days-katrina-trinko
The Wall Street Journal is tougher as much of the content is subscribers only. This article seems to be public.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204879004577108500491449164.html?KEYWORDS=bain+capital
There is more in financial papers if you look a bit.
I submitted a comment with a lot of links to Bain stories, in response to the complaint that no alternate source had been suggested. It is probably in the spam filter. It doesn’t take much effort to find more reliable source than Wiki.
[Fixed. Jonathan]
Thanks, Anon, I will read your links.
David, you link doesn’t work.
Every one assumes that the economy and gasoline prices will remain the same in November. However Sears is laying off 6,000 workers, the Insurance industry may layoff up to 50,000, 11 more Green Industry’s that accepted taxpayer backed loans are in trouble, may lay off thousands more. The US Military is releasing more than 50,000 soldiers in 2012. Real unemployment is around 22.9% regardless what the government numbers say, all this is bad news for the reelection of Obama and the progressive agenda of the democrats.
What is true is the news of rampant voter fraud exposed in the NH Primary by the O’Keef undercover video, 9,000 dead voters still on the rolls in South Carolina, and up to 5,ooo fake Id stolen or bought by Illegal Aliens from US citizens in Puerto Rico. This is new News to the American people, not to those from Chicago, where it is said” The iron fences around the cemetaries is a republican plot to disenfranchise minority voters buried there.”
I reluntantly still have hope for our country in November.
Tatyana…try this link for the steel story.
Note also that Bain was an investor in Steel Dynamics, which has been a much more positive story.
Strange…the Steel Dynamics link doesn’t work, either. Trying again….Steel Dynamics.
David,
Steel Dynamics was certainly a Bain success, but has some interesting implications regarding Bain and Romney’s views of government’s role. Bain put $18.2 million into SD, and the government (state and county) put in $37 million. Bain cashed out five years later for $104 million. Steel Dynamics is still going so the projact was a success. Interesting that this was more of a venture capital start-up scenario than the other Bain deals.
Bain’s other steel venture was more of the bottom feeding nature.
GS Steel: Bain put %8 million in and took $12 million out … plus another $4.5 million in “consulting fees”. GS went bankrupt, 750 employees laid off with no severance and no benefits, and the taxpayers picked up the tab for $44 million in unfunded pensions.
Bill…indeed, SD was much more of a VC than a classical PE deal, although the amounts of money involved were considerably more than in the typical VC deal.
Note also that SD was not in need of management but strictly of money–the management was supplied by Keith Busse, who started the company and had considerable experience as an executive at Nucor.
btw, “American Steel,” by Richard Preston, is the story of Nucor’s early and is very well-written.
I’ll try once more with the SD link..not sure what’s happening here:
Link
…or just use this address:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/288162/bain-capital-and-little-steel-mill-could-patrick-brennan
..or google “Bain capital and the little steel mill that could”
Thank you, David. The story re: Steel Dynamics is among the links provided by Anon, above. But as you said – it doesn’t really applies.
Tatyana…I didn’t exactly say it “didn’t apply”…clearly, Bain does different kinds of deals, and fairness would require considering all the categories when evaluating Bain’s performance and ethics.
David,
“fairness would require considering all the categories when evaluating Bain’s performance and ethics”
You mean kinda like at the sentencing hearing when they give the guilty party a chance to bring in witnesses to testify that he is nice to old ladies and small animals before they sentence him for armed robbery?
David, I meant “case doesn’t really applies to category of cases I asked about”.
The commenter who called President Obama “Hussein” is both silly and filled with hate. Why pick a middle name? Do you usually address people by middle names? Nah. He should know better or at least try to grow up…such juvenile remarks demean him and not the one he would belittle;
Anon,
Can I assume you posted similar comments when the liberals referred to President Bush as “W”? Or is your concern for respect limited to the current President?
The comment name function seems to be not working properly, The comment with the list of links was me.
Well when it comes right down to it; if Mitt played hardball, was a mean SOB businessman, and made money for his employers and shareholders…..I wish I had been a shareholder. Similarly, if he brings the same attitude to the White House in representing the U. S. citizens (in a sense the “shareholders” of the country) I think we’d be well served.
Tyouth,
Mitt apparently broke no laws and certainly made a lot of money. His business model was the same as that of a payday lender, pawn shop or ‘pay here used car dealer’. Legal? Yes. Ethical? In the eye of the beholder I suppose. At the end of the day, his business quite often was to prey on desperate and/or unsuspecting company owners and loot their companies. He certainly made money at it for his employees and shareholders – screwed everyone else involved but took very good care of his own. Didn’t contribute much to the country as a whole either – just himself. You can have your own opinion as to whether that is the sort of leadership we need in the White House. I think we deserve better.
Mr. Kennedy, have you looked at your own links you so patronizingly posted? Or you just typed “Romney/Bain” in National Review search window and posted the results?
None of NR links mention Ampad and Dade Behring – or practice that Bain used and Mr. Waddell described in his no-nonsense comments (or the one described in Boston Globe article I linked to) – which was my rnquiry.
What’s more, half of these NR links consist of a question or paragraph, not an investigation and not even an opinion of the author. And many of those are NEGATIVE towards Romney. Gee, thanks for making my argument, Mr. Kennedy.
WSJ article does mention Dade but in an obfuscating way. They don’t say the whole story, making Dade purchase and subsequent drive to bankruptcy look like a success, instigated by Bain. They forgot to say, was Bain a partial owner at the time Dade made a comeback or not? If stated (at the beginning of the article) goal of PE company like Bain is to turn around a failure, make it profitable and draw part of these profits for Bain investors – and if Bain dropped Dade at the time of Dade bankruptcy – than that stated purpose is a lie and critics of Bain are right.
OK, I see my question was answered only by Mr. Waddell (thank you) – and it confirms my impression.