Tamny: Romney Did A Great Job At Bain Capital

NEWT AND RICK SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEIR IGNORANT, LOW-BLOW ATTACKS

JOHN TAMNY WRITES:

TO STATE WHAT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS to Romney's opponents, the current Republican frontrunner has handed them all the ammunition they need to derail his candidacy. Past policies, along with ones proposed for the future are his downfall. Stick to them.

Regarding Romney's work for Bain Capital, there it could and should be said that he was "doing God's work", to paraphrase Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Far from bankrupting companies, Romney and his cohorts at Bain frequently purchased poorly run companies in possession of underutilized assets, and in most instances managed them with great skill.

If this is doubted, the naysayers which sadly include Romney's opponents would have to explain the exceptional profits Bain earned for its investors during Romney's tenure that, according to the Wall Street Journal, ranged anywhere from 50 to 80% on an annual basis. To raise the money needed to purchase those companies, Romney et al obviously didn't hold guns to the heads of investors, rather the backers of Bain lined up for the opportunity to ask Bain to manage their money.

Did layoffs occur at the companies that Bain purchased? Of course they did. Businesses are not in business to create jobs; instead they exist at the pleasure of investors (including pension funds allocating the capital of the average worker) and must achieve profits in order to remain open. For Romney's opponents or voters in general to lament this reality is for both to lament progress, all the while revealing that they haven't a clue about how jobs are created.

Assuming they don't, jobs are created when profitable concepts are matched with capital. Simple as that. Of course a major reason that Bain purchased the companies it did was that existing management had failed on the profit front, thus necessitating layoffs in order to bring production costs down. Businesses are not charities.

And in reducing costs that would naturally include overhead, Bain succeeded a lot of the time in nursing the companies it purchased back to profitability. For those who care about jobs, what Bain did should excite them. Indeed, it is profits that attract the investment that is tautologically necessary for companies to expand, and through expansion, offer up employment.

With job creation in mind, Romney and his camp should regularly shine a light on his brilliant doings while at Bain. The layoffs that the corporate turnarounds necessitated set the stage for much better employment in the future for underutilized capital being freed up to fund expansion that was actually profitable. It's no doubt similarly true that the healthy companies Bain created were a magnet for further investment that fostered the creation of even more jobs.