Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet

[Born_A_Truman]

The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava.

~

Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.

~

Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 (258 pounds) a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

~~

More and more of these stories are coming out about Greed Bain Capital

[jaxx]

This is a good one....tells the dirt. Mittens will be out of breath if he has to defend this.

[Born_A_Truman]

And taxpayers picking up the tab in his wake:

Quote:...a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan.

[pappy]

(01-06-2012 10:06 AM)Born_A_Truman Wrote:  And taxpayers picking up the tab in his wake:

Quote:...a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan.

Willard (corporate welfare queen) Romney

[jaxx]

Thu Jan 05, 2012 at 09:17 AM PST
Mitt Romney, who secured a $10 million federal bailout for Bain, calls Obama a 'crony capitalist'

by Jed Lewison

<..> And while Bachmann at least voted against TARP, giving her some standing to use the rhetoric of crony capitalism, Romney not only supported it, but has personally benefited from what Bachmann would certainly call "crony capitalism." In 1991, he convinced the federal government to forgive $10 million in debts owed by Bain & Co., a deal that helped prevent his company from failing and ultimately made him millions of dollars. Via Nexis, here's a story about it published on October 25, 1994 in The Boston Globe:

Quote: Republican Senate nominee Mitt Romney's rescue of a business consulting firm was achieved in part by convincing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to forgive roughly $ 10 million of the company's debts, according to sources close to the deal and federal records obtained by The Boston Globe.

<..> Bain & Co. and the FDIC agreed to the deal after months of intense negotiations. Moreover, bankers say debt forgiveness is relatively routine when a company is at risk of collapse.

But the $ 10 million cost to the FDIC raises the question of whether Romney's success, as well as the resurrection of Bain & Co., came partially at the expense of the federal agency that protects US bank deposits.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/05...capitalist

Mitt has some explaining to do.

[Brainwreck]

I am so glad some of this is coming out. Romney has come a long way pumping up his own halo. He is not only a liar and an opportunist, I understand he is a bastard to work for--and with. All his bragging amounts to nothing when it's put to the test. If he does one decent thing, probably by accident or by plucking up someone else's ideas, he wraps it around him like an invisibility cloak. How often have we heard how he single handedly saved the Olympics? If he ever made it into the oval office who would be there to bail us all out when the country crashed. I doubt there would be another Obama in the wings willing to take it on. Wasn't Bush enough of a lesson for these insane republicans?