You people hate Obama

[guido911]

Religion, as in all things, should be in moderation.

We'll never agree about the tax thing.

Using a religion to hate is just sad.  It happens often though.

Yep.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnlRrxXv-v8[/youtube]

[Conan71]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZMndjLIQUFw[/youtube]

I love it, HuffPo actually provides some of the more balanced reporting these days.  Whouda thunk?

GST wasn’t that robust if Bain came in to the picture in the first place.  Where was the Clinton White House in trying to help protect American steel worker’s jobs from cheap imports flooding the market in the first place?  Looks like Bain was trying to help out where the government wasn’t.  And finally, what does an investor or investment house do?  They expect a return on their investment.  Not all end happily.  If anything the GST workers would have been out on their donkey long before 2001 if not for Bain.

The ad is on generally solid factual ground. But it fails to mention the overall decline in the steel industry during the 1990s and the fact that Romney had left Bain two years before GST's bankruptcy in 2001.

Private equity firms like Bain buy companies with loads of debt, cut costs and do other things to make them more efficient. They then cash out by taking the companies public on a stock exchange or, recently, selling them to other buyout firms.

The business model thrived for years, leading to the creation of more buyout firms and more bids for companies.

Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, said Monday that "no one is questioning the private equity industry as a whole." But by using GST as an example, the campaign argues that Romney's years at Bain were spent maximizing profits for himself and other investors rather than creating middle-class jobs. Using unemployed steel workers to tell their personal stories, the ad packs considerable emotional heft and illustrates the human costs that come with a company's failure.

Romney's tenure at Bain became an issue during the Republican nominating contest when Texas Gov. Rick Perry labeled Romney a "vulture capitalist" and brought up GST's closure as an illustration. A super PAC backing Newt Gingrich ran a 28-minute film blaming Bain for the demise of several companies. But that video was riddled with so many inaccuracies that even Gingrich distanced himself from it.

The Obama campaign ad is on safer ground by focusing on a single company and highlighting specific ways Bain's management affected workers, such as cutting their pensions and health care benefits as the company faltered.

But Bain's management was not the only reason GST suffered. The availability of alternative materials and huge wave of imported steel, particularly from Asia, cut U.S. steel production during the 1990s and led to a string of bankruptcies of steel-related companies.

The ad also neglects to mention that GST's bankruptcy took place in 2001, two years after Romney had relinquished day-to-day management of Bain in order to head up the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Cutter insisted that Romney "set this in motion" and noted he was still earning investment income from Bain at the time despite his hiatus from full-time involvement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120514/us-obama-adwatch/

[Townsend]

Yep.

Move 'em all to a corner of Wyoming and the rest of us can move on with ourselves.

Use any of them you want to make a point.  They're all crazy or confidence artists in my book.

[guido911]

Move 'em all to a corner of Wyoming and the rest of us can move on with ourselves.

Use any of them you want to make a point.  They're all crazy or confidence artists in my book.

Just away from Jackson Hole (oh, and from this).

[DolfanBob]

Just away from Jackson Hole (oh, and from this).

Whoops! there for a second I thought that was Nugent.

[Gaspar]

It's a good issue for the president.  He is going to campaign with Ricky Martin next week according to a press release today.  I think the gay marriage issue will take some pressure off of him so that he doesn't have to address the economy, jobs, energy or other issues.

Gay rights is an issue that has sharp teeth for candidates who embrace positions of faith or pander to evangelical voting blocks.  If he can exploit enough momentum in the gay community, he can perhaps expand this issue to overshadow at least part of the larger spectrum of important issues.

I think he needs to be careful though, because he may serve to alienate part if his base in the older African American and Hispanic community.  While they may vote Democrat, they tend to embrace more conservative social values as a community.

The ball is squarely in Romney's court now.  How Romney handles this will determine if this flip-flop was a good idea for the president (in 2008 Candidate Obama affirmed several times that he believed marriage was "between a man and a woman"), or if he is shooting himself in the foot yet again.

We are about 6 months out and we continue to see these attempts to steer from logical, fundamental, economic, or leadership issues to emotional exploits.  This scares me a little because when it comes time for presidential debate, we may see a re-run of 2008 where hopey-changy rhetoric trumps any discussion of reality.  If this is the setup, again, track record and qualifications will be meaningless.

[heironymouspasparagus]

And Michelle is still stirring up the carp.  There are people who actually thought this kind of liar would be a good President...oh, wait...what?


http://news.yahoo.com/bachmann-fundraising-whopper-202734700.html

[Conan71]

And Michelle is still stirring up the carp.  There are people who actually thought this kind of liar would be a good President...oh, wait...what?


http://news.yahoo.com/bachmann-fundraising-whopper-202734700.html

WTH does this have with the president’s trip to Cushing?

Wait...What?  Marshall’s!

[nathanm]

GST wasn’t that robust if Bain came in to the picture in the first place.

One can have a robust (and profitable) business and still sell it to PE. The problem is the deals are structured to load the debt onto the company being purchased while simultaneously extracting management fees large enough to pay the PE firm more than the company was purchased for within a few years rather than paying off the debt, even if the company has to draw on lines of credit to do it. It's much like the CDO scam, actually. Nobody cares about the long run because their payday comes rather soon.

If the company does manage to make its way out from under the debt load, that's just a bonus. The firm will have long since made their money back and more.

I don't have a problem with the concept of PE, mind you. I have a problem with most PE deals being designed to funnel money to the PE firm at the expense of lenders, suppliers, and employees with zero consideration for keeping the company a going concern for more than a couple of years.

Edited to add: Not to mention they'll be happy to buy up a profitable company and sell its machinery to a chinese company if the machinery happens to be worth more than the business for whatever reason. (Sometimes just worth more than what can be extracted from the business now) The argument could be made that the world as a whole is better off after such a transaction, but it's hard to say that our country is better off when that happens. The argument also could be made that the owner of the company just mispriced it and therefore the world as a whole may not be better off.

[erfalf]

By no means am I defending the actions of some PE firms, because they are deplorable. But the thing is, in most cases the company that got acquired, agreed to it. Rarely are takeovers hostile. So say what you will. Those complaining should have either done their due diligence (it should be no surprise that PE companies do what they do) or stop complaining at the outcome. If they wanted control, they shouldn't have given it up.

[Gaspar]

I have seen several reasons for engaging PE firms, and Nate is right.  In many cases a PE firm can be courted to purchase a profitable company.  Management and labor issues are also a good reason to engage 3rd party investment.  PE companies thrived in the 80s because companies were growing in many cases too fast to keep up with management requirements.  The infrastructure of these companies was fragile, and many went boom to bust quickly because of that.  Smart investors in a company will engage a good PE firm if they see that pattern and want some assurance.

Bain worked several sides of the equity equation. They bought the good, the bad and the ugly.  Romney's specialty was buying the ugly.  These were companies that were in some cases months away from complete failure.  He did quite well. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204331304577140850713493694.html

He bought dogs and turned them into show-ponies.  Sure 22% of them failed but most of those escaped the grave with Bain resources for as long as 8 years before filing bankruptcy, and currently there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist today because of tough management decisions made by Romeny and his group.

I guess when you really consider it, 21 million employees, $15 trillion in debt, and $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. . .sounds like a job for Romney!


 

[we vs us]

I have seen several reasons for engaging PE firms, and Nate is right.  In many cases a PE firm can be courted to purchase a profitable company.  Management and labor issues are also a good reason to engage 3rd party investment.  PE companies thrived in the 80s because companies were growing in many cases too fast to keep up with management requirements.  The infrastructure of these companies was fragile, and many went boom to bust quickly because of that.  Smart investors in a company will engage a good PE firm if they see that pattern and want some assurance.

Bain worked several sides of the equity equation. They bought the good, the bad and the ugly.  Romney's specialty was buying the ugly.  These were companies that were in some cases months away from complete failure.  He did quite well. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204331304577140850713493694.html

He bought dogs and turned them into show-ponies.  Sure 22% of them failed but most of those escaped the grave with Bain resources for as long as 8 years before filing bankruptcy, and currently there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist today because of tough management decisions made by Romeny and his group.

I guess when you really consider it, 21 million employees, $15 trillion in debt, and $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. . .sounds like a job for Romney!


 

Romney, unfortunately, will be wandering into the same thicket that greeted Obama, namely a GOP-led House -- and possibly Senate, in 2014 -- that is as preoccupied with making ideological statements as it is in actually governing.  I don't believe that Romney will have any latitude whatsoever to actually govern -- he will be preoccupied with the Tea Partiers, who will spend their time pushing him ever rightward, forcing him to support ever more cockamamie legislation in their pursuit of symbolic purity. 

This is a problem because Romney will need at least some level of flexibility to deal with our monumental national issues.  He'll have to be able to find enough votes on the other side of the aisle, but his own party will demand that he not bend at all, and in order for him to win re-election -- which he will start running for as soon as he's inaugurated, he will have to kow-tow to the base. 

Romney is an awful choice if you have any concern whatsoever about how the Tea Partiers have governed so far. 

[Gaspar]

Romney, unfortunately, will be wandering into the same thicket that greeted Obama, namely a GOP-led House -- and possibly Senate, in 2014 -- that is as preoccupied with making ideological statements as it is in actually governing.  I don't believe that Romney will have any latitude whatsoever to actually govern -- he will be preoccupied with the Tea Partiers, who will spend their time pushing him ever rightward, forcing him to support ever more cockamamie legislation in their pursuit of symbolic purity. 

This is a problem because Romney will need at least some level of flexibility to deal with our monumental national issues.  He'll have to be able to find enough votes on the other side of the aisle, but his own party will demand that he not bend at all, and in order for him to win re-election -- which he will start running for as soon as he's inaugurated, he will have to kow-tow to the base. 

Romney is an awful choice if you have any concern whatsoever about how the Tea Partiers have governed so far. 

Sounds like you are just writing president Obama off.  Don't give up, he could be re-elected. It could happen!

[nathanm]

By no means am I defending the actions of some PE firms, because they are deplorable. But the thing is, in most cases the company that got acquired, agreed to it. Rarely are takeovers hostile. So say what you will. Those complaining should have either done their due diligence (it should be no surprise that PE companies do what they do) or stop complaining at the outcome. If they wanted control, they shouldn't have given it up.

They don't have to be hostile. The existing owner(s) get a big check to retire to an island somewhere. Other stakeholders, however, get zero say. (I'm not saying the workers should control the business, but they and the wider community should be taken into consideration when making this kind of decision)

[erfalf]

They don't have to be hostile. The existing owner(s) get a big check to retire to an island somewhere. Other stakeholders, however, get zero say. (I'm not saying the workers should control the business, but they and the wider community should be taken into consideration when making this kind of decision)

If you're the boss you're the boss. I understand there are other "stakeholders", but in the grand scheme of things, if the boss wants it, it gets done. Because Romney's firm was there to profit is immaterial. If not Bain, it would have been someone else.