Bain -vs- the Obama Bailouts: There's Similarities and Stark Differences
Barack Obama's big campaign push against Mitt Romney so far has been to criticize Romney's participation in Bain Capital. Notably, Romney wasn't even a part of Bain during the time that Obama's people are attacking. Even so, it should be pointed out that what Obama tried to do with public money is much the same as what venture capital companies try to do every day. For Obama's camp to attack such investors for that activity is actually an attack against Barack Obama's $800 billion (+/-) bailout.
The purpose of venture capital groups such as Bain is to use private investments to turn failing companies around and make them profitable. They take control, find what ever is broken in the business plan, and fix it. Sometimes it because a company is top-heavy with executives. Other times it is because they have too many in the labor force standing around idle. Some times it is because their product is substandard.
Bain does nothing that Obama didn't try to do with GM and others, and the bailout money. The only differences were that Bain usually made money, saved the company, and did it with money from willing private investors, while the jury is still out as the whether GM has actually been saved, no money is being made because of all the red tape and political strings attached like electric cars and union perks, and Obama used an unwilling public's money.
Obama is pre-occupied with "green" products to the point that they have blinders on to the fact that such products have no market. But that didn't matter to Barry! His insistence that GM produce an electric car, even though you can count on one hand the number that they've sold, has kept GM from becoming profitable, and they remain under the government's thumb.
Add to that Obama's insistence that certain dealerships be closed, and that the union be "taken care of", and you have a recipe for disaster. If Obama would have simply hired Bain to assess GM and make their recommendations, we likely would have seen a better outcome for them...and we would have saved $800 billion in the process! Ask all of those mechanics, salesmen, and managers if they are better off now than they were before the bailout!
So, yes! There were many similarities, and differences. Obama wants you to ignore both!
The BIG difference in Obama's eyes is that government managed his efforts, while private individuals manage Bain's efforts. One creates dependency on government while the other shuns it!
You can and must choose which is better!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Debrajoe Smith-Beatty on -
Thanks for the information.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Meeks on
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Had GM been allowed to file bankruptcy the company would be in the green today. Thus making a profit like Ford.
I have worked in a union shop. It was the laziest bunch of people that I ever worked with. I saw no ambition among
work force. You have to wait until someone dies or retires before you had any hope of moving up. They moved up
solely on senority. Job skills and education had nothing to do with promotions. That company shut down and moved
to South America where people wanted to work. Over 1,000 union workers lost their jobs. Too many said "that ain't
my job" or "you have to obey union rules".
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Permalink Reply by Jerry Morris on
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It dang sure "ain't their job", now, is it. LOL
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Permalink Reply by Tucker Gillenwater on
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Mike, The Unions are part of the problem for sure but there exist other, I believe. The so called war on poverty, riding poverty, a UN driven initiative can not be ignored. Our standard of livireng is driven down while others are driven up. A world of shared low standards of living is the globalist dream. Some company's, Caterpillar comes to mind, sales are in developing country's move plants to avoid high shipping costs. The EX IM Bank funded in part by our tax dollars is part of the "free trade" issue. We need "fair trade".
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Permalink Reply by Robert Inabinette on
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What isn't mentioned here is that the steel industry as a whole could not be saved at this time. Bethlehem Steel which was once number 3 on the Fortune 500 also went bankrupt due to mismanagement and the union. The US had 70% of world steel production in 1943 and gradually fell to about 5% by 2009. Romney should counter with this information.
Bob Inabinette
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Permalink Reply by MUG on
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The Bain investors used their own money. Obama stole taxpayer money and gave it away. The Bain investors profited from taking a risk. Obama stole the shares from the GM investors and gave them to the UAW.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Waller on -
Well, I guess if you're going to go off-subject, it's best to do it in your own article:
Am I the only one who has had the ominous displeasure of a computer crash
while actually reading the Yahoo article about the Flame virus that has hit Iran?My system went into the "blue screen of death" and failed to reboot three times!
Imagine my dismay...
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Dover on -
Right on, Jeff.
Firms like Bain provide an excellent economic service: they make more effective use of capital. In buying a company which is struggling under its own weight and then trimming it down to fighting size -- or, if that's not possible, selling off the component parts -- they take the excess, poorly used capital and reinvest it in more viable, more lucrative ventures. In short, they take something that's not performing well and they create many other, but different, things from its carcass which do perform well. It's a net gain in dollars and probably in employment too. Importantly, unlike Obama, they also know business backward and forward and can make shrewd calculations as to what's likely to work and what is not.
Career political zeroes like Obama, people who have never grown or worked in anything useful in their entire lives, play on the fact that often in these deals, people lose their jobs. The purpose of any business enterprise is not to provide jobs. Its purpose is to provide goods and services at a profit. In order to do that in most cases, employees are necessary, but they are not the reason for the business. The people who were laid off can use their talents elsewhere. But the zeroes who know nothing about that which they meddle in, play on the emotion of "people losing their jobs". It's a crock.
Hopefully, Romney will find an effective way to counter this attack which is forthcoming, but if he's unwilling and afraid to attack Obama on his record, on his lies, on stuff like this... the outcome is anyone's guess. As far as I'm concerned, I've never seen a president so vulnerable as this one, following a first term, not even Carter.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Ruff on
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Waller on
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I commend those who would participate in such shows of solidarity, but I fear the less-than-desirable preception when small turnouts are realized. Perhaps it is better to promote efforts that extremely large numbers of patriots can participate: email bombardments, letter campaigns, phone calling, etc. ...just thinking out loud...
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