The New Republic

Very good summary. One thing I would point out is that Romney's primary role at Bain wasn't as a turn-around artist (whatever that is) as he would have us believe. His primary role was to convince rich people to entrust their money with Bain. In other words, his talent was as a snake-oil salesman; and he was a very good one at that. Now he's selling snake-oil to voters, convinced as he must be that it will work just as well as it did with the rich people who entrusted their money with Bain. The challenge for Romney with voters is the same as the challenge he encountered with those rich people: they expect Romney to deliver the goods. Unfortunately, it's easier to deliver the goods as a corporate raider than it is to deliver the goods as president in a depressed economy.

- rayward

September 17, 2012 at 2:16pm

credibility destroyed (and there wasn't much left) in sentence 1. congrats tim noah. bain capital is not and never was a turnaround investor. many of their acquisitions were divisions of larger companies, some were very healthy and needed growth capital, and others were brand new companies. and you look like a bozo stating authoritatively that the process concluded with bain "taking them public." no. many (if not most) were sold to other companies, or in some cases to other investment groups. and investors like high interest rates! good one. some maybe, but you know who HATES high interest rates? private equity investors. it's not that f'ing complicated dude - they borrow most of the money for their acquisitions. so what's going to be better for them when borrowing lots of money - high interest rates or low? you sound like a jackass spouting off on this stuff and getting it 100% wrong.

- hparsons

September 27, 2012 at 12:23am

it's always entertaining to read an article and comments (i'm looking at you rayward) about people who have never spent a day in the private sector (TNR would have folded decades ago if not for rich capitalists propping it up) talking past one another about how private equity works and what mitt romney did for a living. lucky for you mr. 8% unemployment - whom you just can't wait to have back in the white house - also has no private sector experience, and thus nothing for anyone to find fault with. community organizing (whatever that is) followed by a lazy term as a senator, to the white house.

- hparsons

September 27, 2012 at 12:27am

hparsons, before the community organizer, the last occupant of the White House had business experience oozing out of every pore in his body. He, also, was the governor of a big state. And with all that executive experience, he managed to create less jobs in eight years than the community organizer has created in less than one term. Did I mention he blew up the economy, too? Okay, I'm sorry, that was then. But right now, in managing a campaign, the community organizer is running circles around the business-experienced, former governor from Bain Capital. I've noticed that whenever elections come around, cockroaches start coming out of the woodwork into this site.

- scrubby

October 1, 2012 at 1:16am

". . . whom you just can't wait to have back in the white house - also has no private sector experience, and thus nothing for anyone to find fault with." What a smart observation, hp! It may however have escaped your notice that in the case of Mitt Romney, it's actually his public sector experience that is the problem, and the fact that people find considerable fault with his signature achievement there. What achievement? Why, the Massachusetts health care reform, the model for the ACA. And what people? The base of his own party, of course.

- ironyroad

October 1, 2012 at 2:24am

hparsons, Business people are sometimes good at running very small municipalities (my sister knows one in Michigan who is a good mayor of a village, Swartz Creek), but in any government office bigger than a village a business person has to deep-six the business experience and become a pure politician. The U.S. president and Romney the businessman are two different animals. Romney the governor and Obama aren't so far apart. Note that they both installed universal health care in their bailiwicks. If a president Romney tried to run the U.S. like a business, he would be one of the worst politicians ever, like G.W. Bush was. In government you can't fire everybody whom you think is inefficient. And recently Romney fired 47% of the voters, who are both his consumers and his future employers. That's as dumb as a politician can get, and voters are calling him on it. If Romney does manage to get out of the hole he dug for himself and win in November, you'd better hope, no, pray, that he doesn't run America like a business. We'll go down like a rock in a pond. Government has a thousand more variables to consider than the biggest business--and some of those variables can nuke the U.S. and its citizens. In 2009 Obama saved our economy, after it shrank by 8.9% in one month (deep depression territory) and we lost 4 or 5 million jobs over 6 months. Romney would have let everything bottom out, like Hoover did. "Bottom out" are Romney's two favorite words. He would have taken us directly into another Great Depression. A big businessman in the Oval Office in the last 4 years would have been a complete disaster. And Romney still wants our economy to bottom out. What's left of Al Qaeda (after Obama decimated them) would cheer like hell for that economic plan. They were crazy happy when Bush crashed our economy. I hate Al Qaeda. I don't want them loving anything a U.S. president does.

- magboy47.

October 1, 2012 at 3:00am

For someone who has never spent a day in the public sector (me), my sympathies are with the job creators in the private sector. What is the private sector? Most of my work is in the health care sector. Is that public or private? I understand that Bain realized a billion dollar profit on its recent investment in HCA (that's just Bain's share, not including the share of the Bain investors). Should Bain send thank you notes to the taxpayers who fund much of health care. How did Bain and the other private equity firms who took HCA "private" do it? According to the NYT and others, by taking advantage of electronic medical records and engaging in more aggressive billing practices (some claim up-coding). I've spent the past 25-30 years helping create free-standing outpatient medical facilities, which have lower reimbursement rates but can operate much more efficiently than hospitals and are much preferred by patients. Now, the "private" sector is busy bringing those free-standing facilities back into the hospital, by purchasing them and making them departments of the hospital and, more effectively, by aligning the economic interests of the hospital with the physicians who bring in the patients. Of course, this means higher costs for the same medical procedures (hospitals have higher reimbursement rates than free-standing facilities). For "private" investors in the hospital industry the results are fantastic, but for patients now forced to go to the hospital for the procedure it means less convenience and a much higher co-pay (in many cases the co-pay for the procedure in the hospital exceeds the entire fee for a free-standing facility). And from those "private" investors we can expect more dire warnings about spiraling hospital costs that the "public" cannot afford, as those same "private" investors rack up their billion dollar profits. If ever there were a sector where the profits are "private" but the costs are "public", it's health care. Ask Romney's former partners at Bain.

- rayward

October 1, 2012 at 7:23am

Obama's policies would deliver us more from customers and Romney's policies would deliver us more from investors. The customers help business more because they don't buy regularly in other countries or from other customers.

- Nusholtz

October 1, 2012 at 7:58am

This is how nations get double-dip recessions -- they get tired of how slow the recovery is, so they elect some demagogue who'll promise them balanced budgets and good times. He then returns to the exact policies that created the Recession in the first place -- cutting financial regulation and tax rates. Then, when his cuts to Government spending result in returning to Recession, they wring their hands and say "This isn't what he promised us! All politicians lie!". But there were plenty of non-Supply-Side economists able to predict exactly what happened. I pray Romney does not get in. He's not Bush-II, but his policies mirror Bush-II's policies much too closely.

- AllanL5

October 1, 2012 at 8:37am

Thanks. We cannot be reminded often enough that the economics peddled by the Republican party is intellectual sewage. Although it has brought us nothing but disaster for 30 years, slow growth, income inequality, loss of good jobs, and the Great Recession, they continue to peddle the same crap.

- roidubouloi

October 1, 2012 at 10:53am

I hope every CEO in US votes for Romney; and I hope every corporate worker, who goes out every day to slay the dragons that make CEOs look good and grow rich, votes for our President. CEO Romney is stilted, clumsy and clueless is because he has always surrounded himself with brown nosers who tell him what he wants to hear all day, laugh at lame jokes, bitch about the work force isn't working hard enough, just like most CEOs, who spend their days listening to high paid consultants, like Bain.

- smabry03

October 1, 2012 at 11:19am

Here's how businesses that work, work: either they peddle commodities or near commodities, and focus relentlessly on optimization of their supply chain, manufacturing efficiency and market share, to eak a creditable living out of generally lousy margins, or they focus on finding new markets and new products to fill them to reap the benefit of the higher margins that go to first movers and premium suppliers. It's the latter type we tend to admire and associate most with busienss acumen, although there is just as much hard-nosed business acumen in the former. But both have this going for them that a President never can: they can choose to totally write off entire market segments and investments the instant they conclude they will not be profitable. Both succeed by carving out a piece of a bigger pie in which they can succeed and even dominate. The President: no matter what, every citizen of this country will still be their responsibility after they do the analysis that proves some of us are more productive, more healthy, more worthy, than others. In fact, those that are less productive, less healthy, less "worthy," will, if they are worth $.02 as a leader, be their particular concern. In the last week, I've been involved in a decision to abandon a market at which we failed to make significant traction, never achieving more than single digit market share. In that decision we left the customers we had managed to get to buy our product essentially to pay for their wrong choice, with a dead-end product. That's business. A President who does that to 10% of his market - 10% of the population - would rightly be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

- IowaBeauty

October 1, 2012 at 12:03pm

Can't say much that hasn't already been said here. But I did just run across an interesting article along the same lines. ""Ryan takes out the ax and goes after programs for the poor – which is the last thing you ought to cut," says David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan's budget director. "It's ideology run amok." Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/mitt-romneys-real-agenda-20120928#ixzz284CGJy6Y" pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink pleasedonteatthelink Very interesting, the "Read more:..." stuff popped up on it's own when I pasted the citation. Wonder whose java script did that? I likey.

- GSpinks

October 1, 2012 at 12:48pm

Roi. You are correct. The problem is, too many Dems in the Senate and Exec branch are crap-lite. Until the latter changes, we'll continue to go down the drain as a country and as a Party. This election shows no sign of changing that dynamic. It is the ideological and political idiots vs the inadequates. One votes for Neville or Henri-Phillipe over Benito or Adolph, but its not a happy choice likely to solve problems in anything but ther VERY short run.

- drofnats1

October 1, 2012 at 1:28pm

GARY JOHNSON! VOTE FOR GARY JOHNSON! HE'LL SAVE US ALL!

- singlspeed

October 1, 2012 at 4:42pm

Great link spinks. I'd just like to remind you drof that in the long run we're all dead. Gary Johnson absolutely, but not in swing states please......

- Robert Powell

October 1, 2012 at 4:51pm

Robert, I was just throwing that out there. My wife has several politically disinterested friends and colleagues who (still young enough to be swayed by the bad fiction of Ayn Rand) and can't be bothered to vote, try to think "libertarian" but when pressed they don't really know what that entails. They're too apathetic to even be libertarian...but then again that would be very libertarian of them wouldn't it.

- singlspeed

October 1, 2012 at 5:59pm

Most of what is said in this article is irrelevant, because if Romney wins on November 6, the next day the economy will begin a vigorous recovery. Romney’s greatest difficulty in explaining his plan for taxes and the economy is that he doesn’t need a plan. And he knows that. All he has to do is get elected and entrepreneurs will suddenly get active. Entrepreneurs in giant companies and individual proprietorships alike have been holding back because Mr. Obama occupies the White House. They’ve been sitting on trillions in cash because the risk/reward ratio for starting or expanding businesses or bringing out new or improved products and services hasn't been favorable enough. It takes a lot to keep entrepreneurs from doing what's in their DNA - creating, building, doing - particularly with interest rates so low, but Mr. Obama has done it. With a business-friendly, business-savvy person about to occupy the White House, the risk/reward ratio will change before the new president is even in office. Day one - I mean November 7 - job creation will bump up. After that, it's a matter of doing what Romney has already said he would do - reform the tax system, reduce marginal tax rates, and eliminate needless regulations, instead of the other way around. But that's too simple. Most people I know don’t have a clue about this. Most folks, particularly those who plan to vote for Obama, think government has to DO something to create jobs, when in reality, the chief thing government has to do is get out of the way. With the right risk/reward ratio, entrepreneurs will do what they have been doing for thousands of years - create jobs. The simple answer to the frequent Democratic assertion that job creation is lagging because there is “no demand,” is that the demand needed to justify the new jobs HAS to come from the new salaries and wages of the newly created jobs, not from the incomes of those already employed, who are already spending as much as they want to or should spend. When jobs are created, two things happen: Production is created and income is created – new income to buy the production that has just been created (in the aggregate, of course). Jobs (and income) first, then demand. Millions of new jobs producing the host of additional, new, or improved products and services those millions of newly-salaried consumers will want to buy. The new producers and the new consumers are the same persons. Everything stays in balance. In the aggregate, demand equals supply. It’s a bootstrap operation, and always has been, despite those who say it doesn’t exist, and who say that instead, we need to build the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up,” whatever that means. Everyone benefits because everyone who wants a job will have one – whatever “class” they’re in. Poverty is driven to a low level, with all the attendant societal benefits that brings, and all without a dime of additional government spending. Nothing new or mysterious here - no “trickle down,” no “magic,” no “voodoo.” Just simple cause and effect. It’s the way economies have grown for thousands of years. Entrepreneurs taking risks, investing their money, and creating jobs and income. For example, despite the very high failure rate for new restaurants, every year tens of thousands are opened. Each one requires a substantial investment – in space, equipment, and workers – all done before there is even a single dinner reservation. There is no line of people outside waiting to be fed. Entrepreneurs do it because they have to - it's in their DNA. Job creators have to create, build, do. By nature, they are the most optimistic persons on earth. To a person, they believe that if they build it, demand will come. The new jobs and new income they create turns into demand for what they have just produced. It is the theories of the left that should be called “voodoo” and “magical thinking.” There is no mysterious outside force to provide incremental demand, as the left imagines there is. Where else could sustainable incremental demand come from except from incremental jobs and income? It could not be otherwise. That’s what supply siders really mean when they say production creates demand, a thesis many folks find hard to accept. What supply-siders should make clear is that it is the wages paid to obtain the new production that creates the new demand. Availability of money to invest is not the problem. There is enough capital available for job creators to put everyone back to work, and then some. The problem is that entrepreneurs think the risks are too high in relation to the rewards. The risk/reward ratio is out of whack. The perceived risk/reward ratio is not attractive enough to grow the economy at the desired rate. The answer is to reduce the risks and increase the rewards. That is what Romney is proposing to do, and if he is elected, job creation will start to surge on November 7. The risk/reward ratio will immediately improve and job creators will respond. Heaven forbid that one of their competitors might get there ahead of them! There could be a real rush. What I don’t understand is why this is so difficult for so many folks to grasp. It is simplicity itself. Romney needs to find a simple and elegant way to explain it.

- truthman

October 2, 2012 at 3:11pm

@ ironyroad you HAVE GOT to be kidding me. the campaign is against romney's tenure in massachusetts? no, it is not. the entire thing is about how much he's paid in taxes, whether or to what extent bain capital ever "offshored jobs," which of their investments went south (shall we talk about solyndra with our venture capitalist in chief?) how rich he is, etc. etc. the obama's campaign is so small and so pathetic. if you step back from it and take a non partisan look (i am not voting for romney, btw) it is absurd that with staggeringly high unemployment, growth that is bordering on contraction, and the middle east in flames, all obama can say about mitt romney is "he's rich and you're not. vote your envy. vote obama."

- hparsons

October 2, 2012 at 7:02pm