I see that the millionaire pundits in the MSM have jumped on the bandwagon of making Bain the goal for a successful economy…..the MSM and the DLC have joined forces to make the Obama campaign use another attack mode on Romney and to protect Bain and Bain-like institutions from too much scrutiny….Mitt says he knows how to create jobs…..someone please ask him how! Bain created NO jobs…the CEOs that were put into place created the jobs……..all Bain did was make money for the investors……Someone, anyone please ask him how?
Bain is a private equity firm…..but what is that in simple terms…..
private equity firms perform a valuable service. They make the companies they buy more efficient, sometimes just by bringing in better management, but often by making tough but necessary job cuts. Bain — which Romney founded in 1984 and ran for 15 years — can point to a number of successes, including Domino’s Pizza and mattress-maker Sealy.
But at their worst, private equity firms buy companies with borrowed funds, suck money out and leave them for dead.
Okay then, let us talk about Bain……just what happened at Bain Capital?
While he (Romney) was at Bain, they invested in 77 businesses; 17 ultimately went bankrupt or out of business. Bain made money. Jobs were lost.
The other 60 stayed or became profitable; 10 grew into huge successes. Among them were Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Sealy Mattresses, Guitar Center, AMC Entertainment, Brookstone, Clear Channel Communications, Sports Authority (which Bain created), Domino’s Pizza and Staples — just one store when Bain invested in it, now over 1,100.
Check it out closely….that is a pretty good record…..and Romney and his surrogates also taunt the jobs creation as a talking point of the Bain experience……shall we look at that?
Pick one of the companies…..for me it is Sealy…..because I recently bought a Sealy Mattress and I was wondering about the company……
There are licensees operating in Australia, Bahamas, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
In 1995, direct export business began to South Korea.
In 1996, Sealy began manufacturing and selling in Mexico.
In 2011, Sealy opened its first manufacturing plant in China. The 100,000-square-foot factory outside Shanghai is a joint venture of Sealy China, which is owned and operated by Sealy Inc., and licensee Sealy Australia
It looks like Sealy did create jobs but not many were here in the good old US….how does jobs creation in China and Mexico help the employment picture in this country?….Maybe someone will ask Mitt that question and stop softballing him in interview….
Sorry, but NO one is really examining Bain and Bain-like companies…..all it is bumper sticker rhetoric…..and now we have loyal Dems like Booker, Clinton and Harold Ford, Jr. condemning the use of Bain as a campaign subject….why…..three guesses….DLC the very group that helped create our financial woes we are suffering today….these people are in the pockets of private equity and will never speak ill of the masters…
I do not see why everyone is so concerned with the use of Bain…..there is NEVER been anything offered in the campaign ads that would question the legitimacy of the practice of kill companies to make money or that the jobs created were few and far between in the US…..
This whole deal is just so much humor!
BTW, the Sealy thing…. I bought one and is the worse sleep I have had since my days of sleeping on an Army cot…….quality SUCKS!
Well written post. Don’t forget, Romney saved the auto industry, and Obama’s policies don’t work. Like you say, the MSM buy his bullshit and run with it. go on…
Hi Don….thanx for the props…….The Sealy story says it all for me……his only claim to fame is Staples….
Good point Chuq. I was kinda wondering when someone would start pointing these things out. Lets not forget the smaller point you made as well. Sometimes Bain streamlined businesses which resulted in a loss of jobs, or “job destruction”. If we are going to streamline the govt. and make it smaller thus destroying jobs, please explain to me how the private sector is going to pick up that tab as easy as Romney claims?
I can just hear Romney now ( voice impersonation required ) ” You have to spend money to make money my friends, and you have to destroy jobs to create jobs my friends, oh yea, and you can destroy jobs to make money my friends” I just had to throw in the Romney tag line “my friends”.
Phillip….the private sector cannot….it is unworkable and is only a tag line that has no footing in reality….but then that is where most Repubs are today…..
Great post. But sadly it seems like a lot of folks think that because Romney was a ‘business man’ he’d be good for the economy.
Hi Hansi……….like I pointed out Mitt created NO jobs….not with Bain or as governor….someone needs to make the voter realize this simple fact…..