I am not 100% sure about Bain...I actually know someone personally here in Nashville that was in their local office where they worked on healthcare starts....they are just another boutique capital firm
But they also were big into leveraged buyouts..something I am familiar with on a small scale from experience and I am not a fan. They often reward management and the buyout firm at the expense of shareholders and debt holders....and yes employees and yes I am old school...I do think a business has some responsibility to it’s employees
It’s debatable that is good for capitalism. Rush in his hurry to stay neutral (putting it nicely) treated these attacks as on capitalism itself...as though anything goes in capitalism..something I see folks say here on occasion which I do not agree with...we have reigned it in on occasion...monopolies and collusion etc
and Rush aped the establishment GOP and Roger Ailes in doing so...Rush must think one not critique business period.
I disagree and to quote another freeper...
“To claim if Newt attacks Mitt on Bain is an attack on capitalism”
is akin to:
“Saying to be anti abortion is an attack on the medical profession”
Romney can defend himself or not.
is akin to:
“Saying to be anti abortion is an attack on the medical profession”
Or it's like someone saying how dare you disagree with me because I have a right to free speech. Having freedom doesn't mean you can't be criticized if someone feels you exercise your freedom in an improper fashion. People here criticize others for making all kinds of immoral or unethical choices all the time...but we're simply not allowed to do that when it involves criticizing a business?
I’m with you wardaddy. I am no fan of LBO either, and I think this form of consulting is an issue too. When an individual owner hires a management consultant, there is a natural restraint in that the owner will not agree to decisions that will leave him so in debt that his company might go bankrupt.
When the management consultant becomes the controlling decision maker for a corporation, they have an inherent potential for a conflict of interest. Such management has a fiduciary responsibility to both Bain and the shareholders/owners of the company they are managing.
Voters have a right to know whether Bain subordinated the interest of any companies they were managing to their own interests, were they just guilty of poor decisions, or whether unforeseen events tipped the balance into failure.
I think it is pathetic that these candidates are only vetted if another candidate asks questions. And it is outrageous when Alinsky tactics are employed to try and shut up the person asking pertinent questions.
I like your medical analogy better than mine. I said that it was like criticising a bounty hunter’s questionable actions was an attack on Law Enforcement.
I sympathize. If you spend some time in investing and finance, you eventually learn that the guy walking around with a white hat is really wearing a grey hat. In my case, I lost my innocence over the Hunt Brothers flap. Some of the governors of the commodities exchange who shut down silver trading on the long end, on the basis that the Hunts were trying to corner the market, were short silver at the time. In other words, those people were saving their own bacon while putting on the white hat. Some would say that they moved the goal post in order to do so.
Of course, there's always an option for those who still have some idealism: it's usually rebelish. The Hunt Brothers were victims of a group of wicked Establishment short sellers who aim to keep silver down by rigging the market their way. Michael Milken was a hero who was persecuted by the "JustUs" legal system. And so on.
As cynicism sets in, though, you see a lot of grey. The black hats begin to look grey as well. The only unambiguous market evil that's left is corporate fraud, which makes some short sellers the good guys.
As for so-called "vulture capitalism," here's my take: A pure vulture capitalist is doing the work that used to be done solely by bankruptcy trustees. Central to the job of a bankruptcy trustee is asset-stripping. On the one hand, doing the work at a profit gives the vulture capitalists an incentive to push companies into bankruptcy. On the other hand, loopholes in the Bankrupcy Code have made the process of bankruptcy less onerous at the operational level than they used to be.
Yes, it's true that bankruptcy-for-profit incentivizes vulture capitalists in a certain way. But, fee-based bankruptcy a la trusteeship incentivizes the designated asset strippers in another way. At the worst, the former is a Gordon Gekko - but the worst of the latter is something out of Bleak House.
"You can have any colour you want, as long as it's grey."