Posted on 01/13/2012 1:16:41 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Mitt Romney has been quick to justify his record of laying-off workers and closing plants as CEO of Bain Capital by wrapping himself in the “creative destruction” of free market capitalism But Romney’s idea of capitalism is that you can fire workers and strip companies on the way up, and then if you are big and influential enough, demand taxpaying workers bail you out on the way down.
While Romney’s supporters are putting up a heavy smoke screen, Tea partiers should understand that, as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” only applies to Main Street, not Wall Street.
Far from being anti-capitalist, Mitt Romney’s opponents are asking one of the fundamental questions that brought forth the tea party rebellion: Do we have free markets and moral hazard or do we have crony capitalism where favored interests have the advantage over the little guy?
Romney has given several muddled and disingenuous explanations for why he supported the TARP Wall Street bailout. In his book he said, "[TARP] was intended to prevent a run on virtually every bank and financial institution in the country," and he says "it did, in fact, keep our economy from total meltdown."
Later, during The Washington Post – Bloomberg News debate Romney claimed the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package "was designed to keep not just a collapse of individual banking institutions, but to keep the entire currency of the country worth something."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
TARP was not sold as a program to prop-up the dollar; it was sold as a means of keeping credit markets liquid, to keep banks lending to businesses, so businesses would keep people employed.
From the perspective of keeping people employed, TARP has been a spectacular failure.
Since TARP was passed three years ago, far from using TARP funds for business credit, so businesses might keep people employed, banks have reported three years of shrinking loan portfolios. Millions of workers have remained unemployed or underemployed during those three years, but their taxes will be paying for the bailouts Romney supported for years to come.
And the major reason TARP failed to protect jobs was that instead of being a program to keep credit available by moving illiquid mortgage-backed securities off the books of banks, TARP quickly became a no-strings-attached cash infusion to favored insider financial institutions and corporations, whose highly compensated employees are now supporting Mitt Romney.
Among the insiders who received the no-strings-attached cash were Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, Calyon, Barclays Plc, Rabobank, Danske, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Bank of America, and Lloyds Banking Group.
Not surprisingly, just a cursory examination of Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports shows Romney banked over $798,000 from employees of TARP recipients.
To Mitt Romney, venture capitalist, the average worker is an expendable line on a spreadsheet, until that worker’s tax dollars were needed to bailout financiers who promoted the leveraged buyouts and packaged the exotic financial instruments that led to the financial meltdown of 2008.
Who is more anti-capitalist? Is it Romney’s opponents, who question whether or not a form of capitalism that allows a handful or rich people to avoid moral hazard, manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and then walk off with the money by getting a bailout from the taxpayers?
Or are the real anti-capitalists Mitt Romney, and his establishment friends in the Washington – Wall Street Axis, who hypocritically like having the option of firing the little guy and stripping the factory on Main Street on the way up, but then use their inside power and influence to demand those same little taxpayers bail them out on the way down?
Well written reason I could never support “too big to fail” Romney. The idea that TARP prevented a meltdown is a big bunch of baloney and I think those that supported it knew it.
After re-reading the sentence about Viguerie’s plans to meet with others to agree on a candidate, it appears to be saying he might back Santorum.
The Perry mention in the sentence lead-in, says Perry HAS money...(as though he didn’t need either money or support).
Really?
?
Another invited guest to this meeting, Gary Bauer, jumped the gun and endorsed Santorum.
I don’t think that could sit well with the others. But I’m just talking off the top of my head.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says that the meeting is not to pick someone to endorse.
“Realistically, I don’t think that there’s any expectation that people are going to come out of the meeting and say that we’ve arrived at a unanimous decision for candidate A or B,” Perkins says. “An endorsement was not the purpose or the expected outcome.”
What will probably happen, he says, is a vigorous discussion about where candidates stand on the issues and perhaps a consensus among the leaders, who could make their own endorsements.”
I had heard about Bauer endorsing Santorum.
Maybe they are having a meeting in order to have a meeting.
Way to step up to the plate, fellows!
It is the same tactic used by the left to attack those who question global warming as being ANTI SCIENCE or those who oppose abortion as being ANTI WOMEN.
Bains methods are clearly questionable. And when you look at the huge donations that Bain has made to all the politicians over the years I think the clear implication is that Bain is a crony capitalist enterprise and has been since Romney started it.
Romney is a whiner. He whined about people attacking his “capitalism” regarding Bain. It’s all about letting markets work would be his claim.
But, not for bailing out big financial institutions. Oh no. No “creative destruction” for them.
In fact, let US borrow from them to the max.
That’s Mitt Romney hypocrite.
AD-MITT ROMNEY WILL LOSE!
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