I do appreciate your post from the NY Post. At least it was from a conservative commentator But I must respecfully disagree.
I was with an investment firm in the eighties and nineties that did precisely what Bain does except the firm
acquired troubled banks and S and Ls. The objective was to buy the troubled bank, recapitalize it with either
public investors or private funds we raised, restructure it, hold it for a period of time and then sell it to
attain profit for all investors in the fund as well as the firm. Sometimes we would buy it from other owners and
sometimes we would bid on failed banks the government took over so the government could offset some of the
taxpayer loss they sustained in paying out the depositors thru FDIC. From a business person’s perspective it is
cheaper to buy a distressed entity like a bank if you want entre into the industry than starting it up from
scatch because the shell (or the “carcass” as progressives would characterize it in the vulture storyline)
already has a base of depositors you do not have to go out and find.Sometimes we would get ahead of ourselves as
the bank valuation upticked and the industry soared and borrow a bit too much (”loot” in progressive terms) to
take out profits and try to grow into the next deal and sometimes we were not aggressive enough in our laying on
debt to grow into the next deal.It is a judgement call and those with a hindsight crystal ball could criticize
the judgement calls in retrospective as does the author of the article you posted. As with any portfolio, there
were failed bank investments in the portfolio, most were marginally profitable and a small minority were
spectacular winners that accounted for well above average returns for the overall portfolio of banks.Pretty much
fit the overall profile of a Bain returns.
Our objective was neither noble or nefarious. It was profit and the nobility of saving and creating jobs is
oftimes the byproduct of the purest form of free enterprise that Bain and the investment firm I worked for
practiced.
But I suppose if one wants to encapsulate what we did in political terms for a soundbite:A bunch of fat cat
vultures picked over the carcass of a company, looted it, fired the employees and went on vacation!
I'm in real estate. I started buying junk in bad neighborhoods. I chased out the families that wanted to live like garbage, the criminals and the gangs. I rehabbed the buildings refinanced and then later sold them. I guess in our new lexicon I'm an evil capitalist that threw families out on the street. Of course no one wants to talk about the families that moved in and enjoyed having a nice safe place to live.
Chuckee, you know we disagree on the Bain thing with Romney, but we don't disagree on Romney being a disaster for the election.
I want you to look at that last line you wrote and imagine it as part of a billion dollar ad campaign used against Romney in ad after ad by Barack Obama. Then imagine it in ad after ad by the super-PACS that will be supporting Obama, and then imagine all of the news media, the entertainment industry, late-night shows, and Hollywood providing FREE anti-Romney caricatures based on his being an insensitive, hyper-wealthy, silver-spoon-in-mouth, caring, job firing, middle class despising, Simon Legree.
Romney is not electable, and whether you agree with Newt's attack or not, it has highlighted a supreme weakness of Romney in the election.
We really have only one choice in S Carolina, and that is the poll leader other than Romney by the middle of this week, for the primary, oddly enough, is on 21 January, Saturday.
That will probably be Newt. If we permit that conservative vote to be split one more time in the S Carolina primary, then Romney will not be stopped due to the anointing power of the GOP media, and then he will go on to a terrible defeat in the general election.
God is our only hope.
But, it appears that our only choice is being narrowed down to Gingrich or Santorum, and it must be decided now. The Romney replacement would be helped by appearing to surge this week.