Is that created or “saved”? Romney needs to talk to the stimulus accountants for advice on this one! Seriously speaking, I’m no Romney supporter but as a former business lender I can tell you this is a hard number to project. For every job created, there is a ripple effect leading to creation or partial creation of additional jobs. And how about his “saving the Olympics”? Is he to get credit for every job associated with the Winter Olympics? I would strongly suggest he avoid the use of hard numbers and simply state his past policies have created or saved jobs. As to jobs lost as some ads emphasize, you can’t save every one. As a lender, I can tell you it’s hard to pull the plug on anyone, but sometimes it has to be done. Irony is that many who fail go on to become a success in another venture. They just needed to be told it was a losing venture and time to move on.
Leveraged buyouts are too complicated to fit into a sound bite, and the documentation to prove is claim will not be easy to do either.
I am interested in how well his knowledge of private enterprise was able to be translated into jobs when he was Governor. Has he made any claims with respect to his record in Massachusetts with job creation? I read a few days ago that is was less than stellar, but haven’t seen any articles.