The U.S. cannot have a Private Equity president - Forbes Magazine

[KonaKane]

Yes, THAT Forbes magazine. Even in the stiffnecked halls of one of the staunchest, most conservative publications in America they can stomach Mitt Romney's unbelievably false blabber no more. Instead, one of their staff, Robert Lenzner comes clean and drags ol' Mitt to a Come to Jesus meeting the public needs to see.

The U.S. cannot have a Private Equity president

by Robert Lenzner, Forbes Staff

I can give you several gritty reasons why former Bain private equity czar Mitt Romney is not the person to become President of the U.S. in November.

First, is just one tale of a Bain deal under Romney. Bain invested just $30 million to take over a company. It then arranged for this company to pay Bain and its investors a special dividend of $180 million– or six times the amount of equity capital Bain invested to take control. This technique of forcing your prey to pay back your original investment or more, as in this case, is to ensure that the Private Equity Firm is assured of a profit. It is an exploitative way to strip the company of its spare cash and is indefensible corporate rape. It is one selfish and destructive way to play the Private Equity game. For the average holding period by a PE firm is somewhere between 3 and 5 years– in and out with little thought as to the long term performance of the company or the protection of its employees.

Second, Gov. Romney goes about blaring that only he and he alone knows how to create jobs. What utter malarkey, as political pros have evidence prepared some time ago in 1994 for the late Sen Edward Kennedy by a very close relative of mine that nails Romney squarely for firing more people than he hired. You will see these tv ads come the fall, I guess.This is the fundamental nature of the way Private Equity works. It is a nicer polite way of describing company stripping, the classical ruthless way for a raider to exploit a weakened prey for its own profit. Period.

....

Let’s stop being naive fools. The only accomplishment you can depend on Romney to create is the continuation of the 15% capital gains tax on the “carried interest” of the earnings from successful transactions– a tax that President Obama and others are determined to remove so as to collect fair and proper revenues from the private equity industry.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzne...tt-romney/

[jaxx]

What an eye opener. No wonder the GOP wants to tamp down the Bain commentary from the other candidates.

[KonaKane]

Bain will be the bane of Romney's campaign, and very likely the single issue that sinks it. The Democrats better go after this like a pitbull to a raw steak, and never let go.

[Peacetrain]

ruh roh.. not good for all the Bain Capital people.. who were out defending Mr Romney..

[SemiCharmedQuark]

Thank you for posting this.

[yowzayowzayowza]

The Obama commercials seem to jus write themselves. Thx for the post.