MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Interesting article, especially this little tidbit ...
" ... It is essential to recognize that there is only one significant benchmark of performance for a financier: internal rate of return (I.R.R.), which is basically the rate at which a particular investment grows. An investor who invests in a private equity transaction only wants to know how the investment did. When it comes to the means employed, ignorance is bliss. Unlike in the more public corporate world, where boards, shareholders, customers and sometimes public activists scrutinize the social implications of what a business does, a financier’s performance is measured by one question: what was the I.R.R.? ... "
Comments
Thanks.
So a few (overlapping) real questions--I realize we don't do real questions or answers in presidential campaigns--for Governor Romney (Obama, too) might be:
1. How, if at all, would you as president distinguish your primary measures of economic success for our country from the measure of success used in the world of private equity--the rate of an investment's growth--where you offer your experiences as proof that you "know how to create jobs"?
2. You and your party justify tax cuts for extremely wealthy individuals and institutions as desirable because, you maintain, they are "job creators". When you say they are "job creators" do you mean that their decisions lead to the creation primarily of American jobs, or Chinese jobs? Is it true that in the private equity world the widely accepted view is that investing in America is now considered passe, because we are a "mature" economy?
3. You seek to place the full weight of blame for the difficult plight of our middle class on President Obama's policies. Do you believe it is a problem for the middle class and for our society as a whole when profitable, sometimes even leading-edge companies decide to shut down and locate in China or elsewhere because they can earn greater profits due to the lower wages they can and will pay? What, if anything, do you believe the US government should do in response to this reality?
by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 10/19/2012 - 9:59am
Obama did speak to question 1 above in a press conference (likely the first one after Corey Booker's spring appearance on Meet the Press; the date is not given in my source, which is pp. 408-409 of David Corn's Showdown). In response to a question about why Romney's Bain connection was a legitimate and important campaign issue, Obama said:
by AmericanDreamer on Sun, 10/21/2012 - 12:59pm
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by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 10/19/2012 - 12:11pm