[Proud2BeRight]

Do I recall RINO Mitt flippantly saying he was a numbers guy in answer to someone challenged him on that 100k number at one of the latest debates? You mean he still hasn’t put the numbers wherehis mouth is? Hopefully he is not as big a liar as the newsletter producer.

[gleeaikin]

Creative statistics in an election year, what a surprise? I really do look forward to a much more nuanced esamination of this job creation/job loss issue. For example, to what degree do jobs created by Walmart (for example) result in jobs/businesses/other tax revenue lost in communities where Walmart sets up shop? There is simply not enough cost/benefit analysis done in many government situations.

[ml/nj]

Staples, to the extent Romney had anything to do with it, is to Romney's credit; but not because of jobs gained or lost. I still remember my reaction when I first walked the aisles of a Staples store that opened near me. It was: "I'm I sure glad I don't own a stationery store." It didn't take long before every stationery store I had shopped at, or knew about, had closed their doors. Those were jobs too.

Rather Staples was a good thing because it drove down the cost of doing business in the United States. Competition is a good thing.

I'm not sure Mitt would say it that way. But, there, I said it.

ML/NJ

[EGPWS]

Interestingly, when Romney ran for the Senate in 1994, his campaign only claimed he had created 10,000 jobs.

This is 2012, and Romney has adjusted his numbers to account for political inflation....

[JediJones]

Romney Camp Admits That Its Bain Job Creation Number Is Bogus

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/04/397565/romney-admits-bain-jobs-bogus/?mobile=nc

[Romney spokesman Eric] Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino’s (7,900 jobs).

This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain.

Bain Capital has been responsible for thousands of layoffs at companies it bankrupted, such as American Pad & Paper, Dade International, and LIVE Entertainment, which Romney’s stat completely leaves out. He’s also taking credit for jobs created long after he left the firm to launch his political career. To sum it up, the stat Romney uses is incredibly dishonest...

[Question Liberal Authority]

He should just say he "created or saved" 2 million jobs, and that the figure is at least as accurate as Obama's, while the cost to taxpayers was at least $900 billion less.

Staples was something like 85,000 jobs. I don't think Mitt claimed to have personally created each job single-handed, but I haven't been following the debates that closely.

[Utmost Certainty]

You might find this interesting:

“For people not familiar with Romney’s background as the owner of Bain Capital or with his relationships to other private-equity firms, the irony of this advice might not have been immediately clear. PE firms during the 2003—7 buyout boom often had their companies use increased short-term earnings that came from reducing customer service, raising prices, and starving them of capital—not to reinvest or pay debt, but instead as the basis to borrow more money, which they then gave to their PE owners through dividends. Many of these businesses are now stuck with enormous debt and falling earnings.”

“Mitt Romney was a pioneer of this strategy. His private-equity firm, Bain Capital, was the first large PE firm to make a serious portion of its money not from selling its companies or listing them on the stock exchange, but rather by collecting distributions and dividends, which in this context is the exact opposite of reinvesting in a company. Bain Capital is notorious for its failure to plow profits back into its businesses.”

“Traditionally, cash-rich public companies have paid dividends to lure and reward investors. They distribute some of the profits that they are not reinvesting as a way to say they have surplus funds and expect to have them in the future. These dividends generally amount to cents or a few dollars per share paid quarterly. But when private-equity firms take distributions, they typically do not tap excess profits. Instead, they increase the pool of available funds by having their companies borrow money—on top of the original debt taken on to finance the LBO.

Mitt Romney used this strategy in the 1990s as part of his private-equity playbook, long before it became common practice during the 2003—7 buyout boom. The credit crisis that started in mid-2007 limited the practice, as it became difficult for companies to borrow funds to pay the dividends. But the scale back was purely a function of credit availability, not of any backing off by the PE firms. Just as venture capitalists rushed to get their businesses listed on the public markets in 1998 and 1999 to take advantage of the IPO frenzy, private-equity groups used dividend payments in this decade as a way to profit from the cheap-credit bubble. If Bain’s experience is any indication, many of the companies that borrowed money to issue dividends will not be able to survive.”