From The Washington Post:
Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I can’t wait for high-profile Democrats like Bill Clinton (Romney’s bidness record is “sterling“) and Ed Rendell (Obama’s Bain attacks were “very disappointing“) and Cory Booker (the attacks were “nauseating“) and Deval Patrick (“Bain is a perfectly fine company“) and Harold Ford (“private equity is a good thing“) and Steve Rattner (“I don’t think there’s anything that Bain Capital did that they need to be embarrassed about“) to explain why Obama shouldn’t criticize Romney for specializing in shipping American jobs to China and India.
After all, such is part of Romney’s perfectly fine and and good and sterling record that he has absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about, right fellas?
Dave Reed
/ June 22, 2012Ignoring the whole story of Bain Capital is lying by omission.
They were a private equity company that did whatever it took to maximize profits in an expedient way. Sometimes that meant companies grew. For the majority of acquisitions that meant cutting wherever and however they could AND taking on unnecessary debt before liquidating. Outsourcing was the name of the game during their heyday.
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Treeske
/ June 22, 2012Agree with Dave and no need to waste more words: Romney is a full fledged 1%r!
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Jane Reaction
/ June 22, 2012Not only was Bain anti-American jobs, but a poor citizen of Houston. Always an arrogant air to them.
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ansonburlingame
/ June 23, 2012Which is better for a company, to ship jobs overseas and keep the company functioning, profitably, or letting a company go under?
AB
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scott e
/ June 23, 2012I just posted something similar on FB this morning… asking when did it become okay to vote for a guy that was instrumental in outsourcing and stashes millions offshore to avoid taxation….? but one must understand just how brainwashed Americans are now with respect to profits… which basically trump all now
and to answer the question by Anson. it would be allow the company to fail, thereby perhaps allowing a demand to be left so that there’s at least a chance for someone else to supply it.
with outsourcing, you’re just supplanting the worker, fulfilling that demand with a foreign worker that American workers cannot compete with.
It benefits just a few at the expense of many.
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ansonburlingame
/ June 24, 2012Scott,
You make, to me a leaping assumption.
Suppose a company makes a widget with local workers. The cost of the widgets is too high and thus the company begins to fail. You say let the company fail. OK, all the workers in that company, and I mean ALL, from the CEO down to the janitors become unemployed.
BUT, now no expensive widgets are available, maybe, just maybe. My supposition is that foreign company may see the demand and supply their own widgets, much cheaper widgets to meet the demand. And all the profit, jobs, etc. remain in that foreign country. The only way you can use government to prevent that from happening is to implement trade barriers to foreign widgets.
About 15 years ago my son worked for an engineering/design compamy that also had a relatively small manufacturing component as well. The company moved the manufacturing overseas to keep the manufacturing business sustainable but kept the much larger engeering and design functions in the U.S. Is that vulture capitalism or simply good business sense?
While the manufacturting componenet was not the core of that business, the loss of that component would have lowered the profit and growth of the company, retained employees would probably have receiveds a pay cut and any investors for have seen the ROI to down.
Want a good or better job, based on the above. Learn to be an engineer or desgner and not a manufacturing floor worker to start with. But that is not “fair”, right to ask youngsters today to plan ahead for their futures?
Anson
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Kabe
/ June 25, 2012AB, Your advise to be an engineer/designer, or inventor from our last conversation is noble advice, but highly unrealistic. If everyone is an engineer, then what? We will have engineers flipping burgers.
Under your winner take all scenario, eventually we have no one to buy widgets. The wealthy will not create jobs out of the kindness of their hearts if products are not in demand. It seems to me the only 2 things worth investing in today are luxury items and the staples one needs to survive.
Here is my question to you or anyone holding your view. With an ever shrinking middle class, and rising poverty class, what will create demand in the US?
Kabe
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Bruce
/ June 25, 2012I’m no fan of Romney, but I can’t see such blanket condemnation of venture capitalism. I liked your examples Anson.
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