Mitt Romney the "job creator"

"Private equity combines both the best and the worst of capitalism," [Howard Anderson, former VC & MIT Sloan prof.] says. "When things go well, there's wonderful stories to tell about growth. When things went bad, it is not a pretty system — especially since [Romney's former firm] Bain Capital may have personally done well themselves, where both their investors and the employees did not do well."

Here's a guy [Romney] that just took somebody else's money and used it to make more money. The guy has never produced a thing in his life. - Former GST steel worker

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115638/2-portraits-emerge-of-mitt-romney-the-businessman

NPR is doing a series on formative jobs that the GOP front-runners previously held. For Romney, I knew he came from an investment background and is quite rich, but the extent surprised me. He was the co-founder and first CEO of Bain Capital, an elite private equity firm, and is personally worth 100's of millions. But in 2012, does America really need another HBS-trained Wall Street stooge? With the economy sputtering (partly due to Wall St. and the banks), America and Congress are desperate and may be more susceptible to the allure of "the Wall St. solution for recovery." Under the wrong president (and I'm not saying that Obama is the "right" one), we may foolishly accept all sorts of deregulation and concessions in the hope of future prosperity. Mitt can't relate to the average working person at all, and personifies the 2 Americas. We know who/what he serves. Remember his "corporations are people" quote that was legally accurate but foolish to say while campaigning in Iowa?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61111.html

Romney was amazingly successful while at Bain (by Wall St. standards), which is another red flag. The firm had a 15-year stretch of unheard-of 100% rate of return. Clients usually pay priv. equity firms 20% of their profits as fees, but Bain could get away with charging 30% because they were that good. But good at what? Bain was credited with launching or boosting household names like Staples, Domino's, Brookstone, and Sports Authority. So yeah, I guess Mitt does know how to create wealth (for himself and certain pals) and jobs (but just the financial or minimum-wage retail kinds).

You never bat 1000 in this business, so how about the failures? In some cases, Romney's clients paid handsomely for Bain's advice, yet still filed Ch. 11 and were diced up and sold for parts (KB Toys, Ampad-Mead, Dade Int'l, GST Steel). In other cases, Bain encouraged firms to scale back US operations and outsource. Maybe those were the "right" business decisions, but they wiped out millions of investor wealth, cost US manufacturing jobs, and maybe only replaced them with a few financial jobs and exec bonuses. Of course as CEO, it's not like Romney was personally signing the pink slips, but this is what Bain did under his leadership.

And of course, running America is not the same as running a firm. Past success (however amazing) is no guarantee of future performance. California didn't think that former CEOs Whitman and Fiorina had what it took to help the state, and business tycoons Perot and Forbes did not fare well in their political runs. I guess Mitt convinced the people of Mass. that he was the right guy for the gov. job, but POTUS is a different beast. Romney has learned and improved a lot since his failed 2008 presidential bid, and has a huge war chest. Considering the state of the country now, he is a compelling candidate for many people. But unlike the unrealistic hopes we had for Obama, at least we know what Romney stands for, and to his credit he's not really trying to present himself as something else.