His attacks on Free Enterprise are not in line with Conservative thought.
As somebody else explained to me recently:
Too many people are defending Romney as just being a good little capitalist, when this isn't really the case. He was playing shell games and essentially committing fraud with investors. I think most agree that the government should probably punish somebody selling watered gas
so why not punish dishonest debt instruments? I think most agree that if a minority shareholder uses company money to issue himself a big paycheck, this is embezzlement from the other shareholders. When Romney does this with his multi-million dollar consulting fees, this isn't different?
Now the crux of this problem is of course the government. Their corporate limited liability laws unfairly rip up contracts between creditors and debtors. Making debt financing tax deductible, but not equity financing, has seriously skewed the corporate structure. And lastly, the Federal Reserve issuing so much debt (largely indirectly) and then bailing out said debt (→ moral hazard) is a significant problem in aiding and abetting private equity craziness of reckless LBOs, etc.
Specifically how the system works: A bank overflowing with money they created from low Fed Reserve interest rates meets with a private equity firm to talk about taking over firm. The bank provides ~80/20 the money and they together purchase the take over target. The PE firm immediately loads up the acquired firm with debt for the bank to get their money. The debt is structured as a huge balloon payment set to self-destruct in about 5 years. The bank realizes this is ticking time bomb, so unloads this debt ASAP to other banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and pension funds. The smarter investors realize this is a hot potato and keep passing it around. Recently they've been hiding this bad debt in CLOs (almost identical in concept to real estate CDOs). Hidden amongst other debt, people have no idea the mess they purchased. The PE firm on the other hand wastes no time in borrowing HEAVILY again to finance corporate mergers (they don't want to do it from the PE firm directly because they could be liable for the debt). They also borrow heavily to finance huge dividends that more than make up for what they paid for the firm. They justify the dividend legally by jacking up short term profits (price increases, job cuts, quality reductions) that threaten the long term health of the company, and by money saved from tax deductible interest as well. If possible, the PE firm tries to dump their acquired firm before the balloon payment comes up
but even if they're stuck with the firm they usually do very well given all the consulting fees they charge and the huge dividends they give themselves.
Also note that
Romney relied on corporate welfare. Take a walk down the list
here:
A comparison of the 1999 Bain portfolio obtained by the Los Angeles Times to the information in the Subsidy Tracker database my colleagues and I at Good Jobs First created (as well as other sources), yields examples such as the following:
Steel Dynamics Inc. In 1994 this company, among whose financial backers at the time was Bain, got a $77 million subsidy packageincluding grants, property tax abatements, tax credits and reimbursement for training costsfor its steel mill in DeKalb County, Indiana (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, June 23, 1994).
GS Industries. In 1996 American Iron Reduction LLC, a joint venture of GS Industries (which had been taken private by Bain in 1993) and Birmingham Steel, sought some $20 million in tax breaks in connection with its plan to build a plant in Louisianas St. James Parish (Baton Rouge Advocate, April 6, 1996). As the United Steelworkers union noted recently, GS Industries later applied for a federal loan guarantee, but before the deal could be implemented the company went bankrupt.
Sealy. A year after the 1997 buyout of this leading mattress company by Bain and other private equity firms, Sealy received $600,000 from state and local authorities in North Carolina to move its corporate offices, a research center and a manufacturing plant from Ohio (Greensboro News & Record, March 31, 1998). In 2004 Bain and its partners sold Sealy to another private equity group.
GT Bicycles. In 1997 GT, then owned by Bain and other investors, decided to move its manufacturing operations to an enterprise zone in Santa Ana, California. Being in the zone gave the company, which was later purchased by Schwinn, special tax credits relating to hiring and the purchase of equipment (Orange County Register, July 9, 1999).