Greed, debt and Matt Taibbi: What Rolling Stone got right, and wrong, about Bain Capital

CNN/Fortune ^ | 9/4/2012 | Dan Primack

[mojito]

Very few of my friends understand private equity, let alone care about it. But some of them wrote me this past weekend, after reading Matt Taibbi's new cover story for Rolling Stone about Mitt Romney's time with Bain Capital.

[....]

Taibbi took out the long knives for this one, which means he sacrificed a bit of accuracy for potency.

His overall thesis is correct: There is a fundamental hypocrisy in a former leveraged buyout investor railing against America's ballooning debt. Leveraged buyouts, by definition, add debt to a company's balance sheet -- weighing it down in the short-term so that it can (hopefully) thrive in the long-term. Romney defenders point out that America is not the same as a private equity-backed company, a truism that only goes to underscore the flimsiness of using Romney's Bain Capital experience as a singular qualification for the Oval Office.

Unfortunately, Taibbi also takes a lot of wild swings at the broader private equity market that don't ring true. So many, in fact, that his valid critique of Romney's candidacy gets lost.

[mojito]

A good and honest discussion of how PE firms like Bain work to counter the dishonest critiques from the left.

[mojito]

Please correct the caption at your discretion. It should be Fortune, not Forbes.

[1rudeboy]

Thank the Lord that you did not find Taibbi's column "enlightening":

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital [Free Republic]