I wonder what kind of internal contortions one must undertake to be able to defend Romney while simultaneously condemning Soros for their respective private sector operations. That's an act worthy of a circus audience.
Absolutely, given the current environment, it would require a good amount of flavoring to sell it the way Mitt wants to. I think you've identified the main problem actually. He wasn't in it to create jobs, and neither are the vast majority of organizations. Only the government creates organization with the aim to create jobs. EVERY successful company in the private sector is started with the sole purpose of making a profit. Private equity companies are good at recognizing the most efficient means of making a profit. But in a capitalist system, jobs are and should be the effect, not the cause. I think you are painting Bain in an unfair light. Even if we take the approach of stretching the timeline like the WSJ did, only 17 companies ever declared bankruptcy, even long after Bain was no longer involved. That makes 60 companies that that didn't fail. Also, efficient use of capital isn't necessarily predatory. When a company streamlines the supply chain and switches to "just-in-time" inventory methods the value of the company goes up, even though sales didn't increase, simply because they are more efficient with their capital. In terms of leveraged buy-outs, they aren't necessarily trying to make them "appear' more profitable, they are usually actually creating more value. The debt used to finance the purchase comes at a lower cost than the debt currently held, so they are going to use as much of it as possible. Any time the cost of current liabilities can be reduced, a business is more valuable. This isn't just smoke and mirrors, it is accounting 101. They aren't conning the bank into loaning it to them, as the bank is in business to get a certain return on deposits, and it has its own risk analysis department. Generally speaking, the PE firm runs the company for about 5-7 years in a much more efficient manner than they found them. This all increases the value. They then either sell them privately to realize the full return, or to the public market. In both cases, the buyer is provided with full financial disclosure and they make a decision as to what the value of the company is. This isn't predatory capitalism, it is just knowledge and execution of efficiency. But it will require lots of "sauce' as you put it, because 98 of 100 people don't understand how our system is interconnected.
Then you haven't been paying attention. Pretty much every liberal on ET has touted Soros as some sort of demigod.
RCG, so if Bain capital was bad at what they did and lose a lot of money, money which actually would have come out of the pockets of all the pension funds that are invested with Bain, wouldn't they also be bad? You can't have it both ways. Either they are making money for the pension funds by cutting costs at failing companies or they don't cut costs, lose money on their deals and cost pensions billions. So which way do you want to go buddy?