Big Rolling Stone Article on Mitt:Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney....

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

I have to question its balance for the simple reason that a man who engaged wholly in these kind of business practices surely couldn't have made this far in politics. Then again, it is the republicans...

yep... my thoughts exactly but until it gets repudiated comprehensively I'm gona take it Taibbi did his research and any case-in-points he refers to are real as are the statements from the various 'expert and/or character witnesses' he coffee'd with etc It's more than a damning piece.. it's a personal vendetta character assassination job of the highest order... and unashamedly so which makes me think it may actually all be true coz if I was Romney and anything in there was wrong or slated me wrongfully and inappropriately I'd have my lawyers sushi this guy for fun. As it stands it's making waves but the Reps are hoping that there's a bush fire break to this thing.. which it will reach once no stupid over zealous Rep feeds the fire by givin it airtime with some soliloquy on Fox etc.. and then there's the Dem Party this week to blow over it so it'll probably just burn slowly in the background til a broadsheet does an Op Ed on it at which point voters will have dug in on each side of the fence. Rolling Stone would've timed this thing for just now... but I think 'affect' and 'readership peak' would have been considered by their Editor separately .. in this case Readership figs was the motive for timing I reckon whereas if it was put out there two months ago it may have actually had more 'affect'. Effect beat out affect in this instance... but then Rolling Stone is not a partisan propaganda rag now is it y'ol Republicans

leverage buyout Artist

"... he took over existing companies by putting down small amounts of his own cash, borrowing the rest, typically from a giant investment bank, taking over controlling stakes in companies and then forcing those companies to pay him, either through management fees or through dividends and that's his business formula.."

"..take over a company to extract wealth for its investors..."

hmmm.... sounds familiar

• Take huge donations from millionaires and billionaires to fund your campaign
  
• Make secret promises to those donors (undisclosed individuals in many cases)
  
• Then extract those promised results from the system once you've taken over i.e. tax legislature or amending some regulation hidden in the back of a seemingly innocuous bill etc
  
• The LVO (Leveraged Vote Out)

"The government is now running a deficit of around $100 billion per month, meaning that its borrowing requirements would burn through the entire assets of Bain Capital in about 19 days"

hysterical diatribe eh?

Incorrect... the author actually was referring to the 'brand' of capitalism to which Romney has historically adhered to... that's all... you're wrong.

Matt Taibbi is a respected writer on all things economic and does not believe or try to make you believe that Private Equity and in particular predatory LBO outfits caused the crisis... and he clearly and comprehensively explains in minute detail that it was the cavalier invention and use of derivative financial instruments, products and schemes that contributed to the onset of the crisis. I know you and I are clearly partisan as is everybody in this world in some way or another but read the piece with as open a mind as possible and check the facts in it and understand the thesis before coming off as somebody with fingers in their ears.

Is Matt Taibbi an economist? No he is not and doesn't pretend to be... has he done some well respected pieces on economic issues for a very large publication? yes he clearly has as can be found in 2 mins of googling. The college drop out comment is trite and unhelpful... to your case if you have one.

In fact he's done a number of well respected pieces on various issues and has researched a wide range of issues... nothing new here.. most noted journalists are not of economist-pedigree and most of them have done lengthy pieces on economic issues. All of this is fairly obvious in that he is virtually a gonzo journalist who writes for Rolling Stone and not the Journal for gods sake. Guys who use the phrase 'Ass load of money' don't usually write academic or purely business/market focused treatments on economic issues.

All that aside... there is some issues with HOW he worded his piece in some instances although it seems genuinely shot from the hip... which is fine if the central thesis and facts are good. He does seem to have 'some' people confused with his so called attempt to blame the financial crisis on what some are considering he meant venture capitalists and some are taking it as private equity firms. Both understandings are wrong as I've said it's clear on reflection that he was simply alluding to Mitt Romney's history of, lets call it 'Vulture Capitalism' (as one Governor Rick Perry called it) ... in other words when he says 'The Mitt Romney's of this world' he does not mean Mitt Romney as a Private Equity guy in the 90's predating upon failing companies but he DOES mean the type of amoral capitalist philosophy that Mitt clearly subscribed to... while doing those things to make his ass load of money... and consequently his 'Mitt Romney's of this world' comment was aimed at those 'dealers' (in the last 10 years or less) who used the various derivative instruments that were invented, such as CDO's and CDS's (Collateralized Debt Obligations and Collateralized Default Swaps) to magic money out of thin air based on what 'we' know now (and many of 'them' knew then) is unsound principles which do not take market complexity sufficiently into account and so can over time through lack of understanding by the ratings agencies become abused on a massive scale once these instruments get collectivized and chopped up and bandied about in a fast moving global market situation ending in Icelands collapse et al... I digress.

The attitude of these dealers who had no skin in the game per se is very similar to the Romney (and his cohorts) attitude when they did bad things to make quick cash as they had nothing to lose.. they got their fees or dividends either way as was the deal with their master-investment-banker friends before anybody got into bed. Romney is just one of many who've done bad things for money in the last decades. Some senior managers in the largest financial firms were clearly and provably dishonest and did things that had huge knock on effects on the market, some guys pushed the derivatives game way too far when they clearly saw the red flags and forever there has been 'bankers' who have taken advantage of situations using their exclusively clever methods to hood wink people to make money even if their actions cause great harm... not all bankers... not all VC guys... not all private equity guys... and not all dealers and Wall street people... but many and sometimes enough to cause great harm on a scale that can be characterized as 'evil' or at the very least amorally selfish... acting without concern for society.

It's ok to act without concern for greater society when you throw a gum rapper on the street but to outsmart a weak and very old large firm employing hundreds sometimes multi-generations of employee families and using an LBO formula as a strict rule book that can/does/has culminated in the destruction of said firm and said jobs and all the greater societal affects of that destruction ALL WHILE making millions of dollars and consciously designing yourself out of any risk and therefore reducing your likelihood of acting responsibly in that instance or in future instances is NOT GOOD... AND NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF... IT IS DISHONORABLE. The philosophy of the 'Mitt Romney's' of this world as Taibbi puts it, as he meant it, is not conducive to the natural qualities one would hope is expected of a potential president.

To misunderstand it at this point is disingenuous.

Quite clearly the world is trying to deal with the question of how to be prosperous AND how to act with a thought for others... it's an ongoing debate for sure. Ayn Rand would say 'fuk it just do your own thing and selfishness based evolution where the strong are the rich are the best skilled to create prosperous society will solve any equation and any problem and the result will be good' and some 'lefties' as you would call them would say lets all just pick flowers and make some sort of communal soup out of them to feed the poor etc etc... Neither philosophy will ever reign.. because they are not true to our basest nature... which is probably something like 'most want to be rich but most don't want to step on everybody else to get there so lets do what we can to find some way of prospering without being a complete dik'.

Romney acted like a complete dik makin his $250 Million fortune in the manner that he did (not always.. but in many instances and consciously so...well I'm not sure what Mitt is during the day qualifies as conscious;)
.... and Taibbi called him on it correctly, with a well formed argument which served primarily to highlight the great hypocrisy which is Mitt Romney's platform to reduce the countries loan balance when he spent so much of his life blowing it up.... every unemployed guy who lost their job coz Bain tried to 'help' them out pulled a social welfare cheque that inflated the deficit. The hypocrisy is undeniable, even Fortune agreed with it when Dan Primark says (yesterday),

"His overall thesis is correct: There is a fundamental hypocrisy in a former leveraged buyout investor railing against America's ballooning debt. Leveraged buyouts, by definition, add debt to a company's balance sheet -- weighing it down in the short-term so that it can (hopefully) thrive in the long-term."

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

no he doesn't have expertise in all things economic.

He is highly respected though... I mean he seems to be. Just like any journalist and author there's gona be a lota people who don't like him or his beliefs etc.. but a quick googlfication there and you'll see all kinds of folks saying how good he is... and for every link I could post and explain you could post one back so lets not go there. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree that

Matt Taibbi is a noted journalist who has done respected work on economic issues IMO

The inference, I take it, that he isn't respected at all or qualified to write on economic issues or business issues is, I assume, that IF the writer can be discredited then the piece has no value? yes?

Well that's not true at all... any assshole can write one great article and whereas the credibility of the writer can then be justifiably debated (Matt Taibbi may be a complete asshole for all I know) the supported facts and stories in their 'mainstream' piece require careful and comprehensive debunking which, I would need you to do, in order to change my opinion on Mitt Romney following Matt Taibbi's piece, which I may add can be found to be lauded and respected all over the net right now (and conversely reduced to lefty hysterics, although not with any great supporting argument as far as I've seen in reading Rep responses to it today which seem to focus either on usual lefty liberal media crap to the disingenuous misunderstanding of the 'mitt Romney's of this world' comment.)

And without further ado ... your opinion that his piece is a bunch of crap is based on .....drum roll please.....

? ? ?