dagblog - Comments for "I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago."

Newtmentum!

Michael Maiello — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 02:29:16 +0000

Newtmentum!

That's a classic picture,

Oxy Mora — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:26:44 +0000

That's a classic picture, Destor. Very retro. And thanks to you and everyone else for the great comments. My broker has not emailed me back. Well, it's vacation time and he's probably out of the office for a few weeks.

(No subject)

Michael Maiello — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:04:45 +0000

In reply to I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

I dunno about the rested

artappraiser — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:38:20 +0000

In reply to Newt is rested and ready.

I dunno about the rested part: last week he sounded hot and peeved.

Newt is rested and ready.

Donal — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:59:18 +0000

In reply to Love this, Oxy. I'll bet the

Newt is rested and ready.

Love this, Oxy. I'll bet the

Ramona — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:35:22 +0000

In reply to I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

Love this, Oxy. I'll bet the Republicans wish they could do a retroactive fail on Romney. Any chance they could try a do-over at the convention?

Lol. Retroactive retirement.

synchronicity — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:24:06 +0000

In reply to I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

Lol. Retroactive retirement. Self Deportation. He is good at these two word confuscations.

Govenor Romney already told us that if he told us what he would actually do as president, we would probably not vote for him. Lol. Isn't that enough of a hint?

Do we really need to talk about anything else?

Romney's own version of 'Back

Aunt Sam — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:19:36 +0000

In reply to I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

Romney's own version of 'Back to the Future'. Obviously he's purchased and attempting to fine tune the 'De Lorean time machine vehicle', renaming it the 'Romney Retroactive'.

But, can he successfully program it to 'retroactively modify' the historical data that the Expatrioted Tea Partier cites?

Mitt Romney was CEO of Bain Capital (1991 - c.1999 or 2002) and governor of Massachusetts (2002 - 2006). He had promised to run the Commonwealth state as business.

With an approval rate of just 34% in 2006, the Republican he chose to succeed him lost to a Democrat, why did the voters sour on Romney after just four years?

1. JOB CREATION FELL. Job creation fell from 37th to 47th during Romney's term compared to the previous term. Romney only increased the number of jobs by 1% compared to 5% for the nation

2. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WORKING DECLINED. Between 2002-2006, the number of people working in Mass declined by a net 8,500 people, the only state to lose jobs. The rest of the country added 8 million jobs.

3. LOST MANUFACTURING JOBS. Romney lost 14% of the manufacturing jobs in the state, including 40,000 high paying manufacturing jobs. making up for a number of those losses by enlarging the state government.

4. PEOPLE LEFT MASS TO FIND WORK ELSEWHERE. A net 222,000 people moved out of Mass to seek employment else where, a loss of 3.5% of the work force.

5. WAGES DROPPED. Between 2002-2004, wages dropped 5%. Between 2002-2006, the median hourly wage fell by $10 or 2%.

6. SHIPPED STATE JOBS OVERSEAS. Romney vetoed legislation that would have prohibited sending State jobs overseas and barred state contractors from sending jobs overseas. He then sent 6 State Call Centers overseas.

7. INCREASED DEBT. Romney had the largest increase in debt of any Governor in the country, increasing by more than $2.6 billion. He borrowed money to pay for ordinary operating costs such as highway repair and maintenance.

8. INCREASED GOVERNMENT COST FELL ON MIDDLE CLASS. Romney cut taxes for the wealthy, while increasing hundreds of fees that fall mainly on the middle class. Romney increased the fees on services more than the cost of those services and then transferred the money to other account to pay for his pet projects, all so he could say he didn't raise taxes.

9. REMOVED RESPONSIBILITY FOR KEY LOCAL EDUCATIONAL, AND SAFETY PROGRAMS FROM THE STATE. The Programs continued, state mandates required they do so, but the cost was shifted to localities most of which raised property taxes.

Come to think of it, he governed pretty much as he ran Bain. That's why Romney is NOT running on his record as former governor.

According to Rick Santorum, “if Mitt Romney's an economic heavyweight, we're in trouble, because he was 47th out of 50 in job creation in the state of Massachusetts when he was governor. He may have had some success at making money for himself and his partners at Bain Capital, and I give him a lot of credit for doing so, but that's a very different thing than going out and creating an atmosphere for people to create - that create jobs.” - Rick Santorum (3/18/12).

In 1994, Romney had this to say about blind trusts:"The blind trust is an age old ruse, if you will, which is to say you can always tell a blind trust what it can and cannot do. You give a blind trust rules."

'Only time will tell.'

Good review of Bain

NCD — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:18:16 +0000

In reply to I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

Good review of Bain operations under Romney from Bloomberg News, Romney’s Bain Yielded Private Gains, Socialized Losses:

...a review of the public record during his management of the private-equity firm Bain Capital from 1985 to 1999 is that Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for its investors. He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain. Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses. ....In 1986, in one of its earliest deals, Bain Capital acquired Accuride Corp., a manufacturer of aluminum truck wheels. The purchase was 97.5 percent financed by debt..burdensome for a company that was exposed to aluminum-price volatility and cyclical automotive production........In 1992, Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper by financing 87 percent of the purchase price. In the next three years, Ampad borrowed to make acquisitions, repay existing debt and pay Bain Capital and its investors $60 million in dividends.

As a result, the company’s debt swelled from $11 million in 1993 to $444 million by 1995....Ampad filed for bankruptcy the following year (2000). Senior secured lenders got less than 50 cents on the dollar, unsecured lenders received two- tenths of a cent on the dollar, and several hundred jobs were lost. Bain Capital had reaped capital gains of $107 million on its $5.1 million investment....Bain Capital’s acquisition in 1994 of Dade International, a supplier of in-vitro diagnostic products, was 81 percent financed by debt. ...The company filed for bankruptcy in August 2002, because of its inability to service a $1.5 billion debt load. About 1,700 people lost their jobs while Bain Capital claimed capital gains (net of its losses in the bankruptcy) of roughly $216 million, an eightfold return. ....In the two years following the acquisition in 1993 of GS Industries, a steel mill, for $8 million, Bain Capital increased the company’s debt to $378 million on operating income of less than a 10th of that amount...By the time the company went bankrupt in 2001, it owed $554 million in debt against assets valued at $395 million. Many creditors lost money, and 750 workers lost their jobs.....Bain Capital’s acquisition of Stage Stores, a department- store chain, in 1988 was 96 percent financed by debt (mostly in junk bonds)...Bain sold a large part of its stake in 1997 for a $184 million gain, three years before the company filed for bankruptcy because of its inability to service its $600 million debt....While Bain Capital wasn’t alone in using financial engineering to turbo-charge its returns, it was among the most aggressive under Romney’s leadership. Enriching investors by taking leveraged bets isn’t a qualification for a job requiring long-term vision and concern for public welfare. It is appropriate to point that out to voters.

(Anthony Luzzatto Gardner works at Palamon Capital Partners, a private equity fund based in London, and was director of European affairs in the U.S. National Security Council in 1994-95. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Brilliant, Oxy. And, this is

Michael Maiello — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:30:57 +0000

In reply to I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

Brilliant, Oxy.

And, this is so funny to watch. What is it about Mitt that he's so unwilling to answer questions about his financial history that he can't just be straight with us? Not to give the guy advice but if he just said, "I designed a deal that gave me a few years so that if it turned out nobody wanted to elect me to anything or that I hated politics, I'd be able to go back," most people would say, "sounds reasonable."

Sure, he'd then have to own Bain's record. But that's what he's running on. What Romney's doing would be like Obama in 2008 saying, "You're right. Community organizer isn't a real job."

I suspect it's just a patrician, temperamental refusal to be questioned. Or that he's hiding something shady.