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Bain

 

Mitt's about to come under attack for his time at Bain. It's a great time to have this conversation - it's an important one.

Bain Capital was co-founded by Mitt Romney. From the article:

Bain Capital manages approximately $66 billion in assets, and has founded, acquired, or invested in hundreds of companies including AMC Entertainment, Aspen Education Group, Brookstone, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Domino's Pizza, DoubleClick, D&M Holdings, Guitar Center, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Sealy, The Sports Authority, Toys R Us, Unisource, Warner Music Group and The Weather Channel.
That's Mitt Romney's world.

When some people think capitalism, they think of firms like Mitt's that aggregate the money of investors for the purpose of acquiring companies and managing them to a profit for the investors.

Sometimes, when running a business, you hire people for the long-term benefit of the owners. Sometimes, for the long-term benefit of the owners, you fire people. A business belongs to the owners - obviously. It's their company, or they wouldn't be the owners.

At some point, someone started the company, built it to success, and decided to either:

  1. Take it public.
  2. Open it up to private investment.
  3. Sell it.
Had one of those things not happened, Bain wouldn't have been able to become an owner, whether in full or in part. The previous owners found enough benefit in Bain's offer to accept it.

Bain didn't just take over the business against the wishes of the majority of the owners. They either acquired enough stock to own the majority of a company, or they made the owners an offer attractive enough to acquire all or part of the company.

In other words: it was a voluntary transaction, and the owners have every right to do with their company as they choose. They own it. It's their company.

What's not a voluntary transaction: when Obama took over GM.

As I watch Newt Gingrich take on Mitt Romney by releasing a video entitled, "When Mitt Romney Came to Town," I'm glad that he is. Why? Because this is Obama's intended campaign theme for the election. Obama plans to put the capitalism on trial, with Mitt Romney as Exhibit A. Newt is doing now what Obama intends to do later, and if Romney doesn't have a good and authentic answer to it, then he will deservedly fail.

Am I proud of what Newt is doing? Oh no. Newt took a deep dive into the class warfare pool. To hell with him for doing so.

Anybody who reads this knows that I am no fan of Mitt Romney, but not because of his time at Bain. He authored Romneycare, the blueprint for ObamaCare. To hell with him too for that.

I'm not deeply invested in what Romney did at Bain, and if any of it was illegal or used the government to take property from someone, then he ought to go to jail. But if it was legal, and I suspect it was or it would have come up in his runs for Senate, Governor, and President in 2008, then fair enough.

Capitalism is a free market exercise based upon voluntary transactions. Attacking freedom is always worthy of derision, no matter the source. The property of a business owner or business owners is theirs and theirs alone. As long as the business is legal and based on voluntary transactions, what the owner does with their business, like with any of their property, is nobody's business.

ETC: Great article on Bain's investments in the Wall Street Journal.

Synopsis: Most of the investments that Bain made were in troubled companies, which makes sense or there wouldn't have been investment opportunity. With troubled companies, you get more risk, but also a better value in the purchase of ownership and greater potential reward when success arrives.

I think I understand to a better degree now why Mitt says that he believes he is the guy for the job. America is, in some ways, like the troubled companies in which Bain specialized. Interesting...

MORE ETC:

GOOD ON RON PAUL, PART II: Bingo.

In an exclusive interview outside a Manchester polling place, Ron Paul lashed out at fellow Republicans for making unfair and ignorant attacks on Mitt Romney's business record.

"I think they're wrong. I think they're totally misunderstanding the way the market works," Paul told me. "They are either just demogoging or they don't have the vaguest idea how the market works."

 


by Brett Rogers, 1/8/2012 1:19:51 PM
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