NEW ROMNEY VIDEO: In 1985, He Said Bain Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits

[TroyD]

Thu Sep. 27, 2012

By David Corn

Campaigning for the presidency, Mitt Romney has pointed to his stint as the founder and manager of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, as proof he can rev up the US economy and create jobs at a faster clip than President Barack Obama. Last year, while stumping in Florida, Romney declared, "You'd have a president who has spent his life in business—small business, big business—and who knows something about how jobs are created and how we compete around the world." His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, has said that Romney's Bain days afford him more expertise than Obama to "focus on job creation and turn around our nation's faltering economy." Romney has even claimed that during his tenure at Bain, "we were able to help create over 100,000 jobs." In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Romney smacked Obama for having "almost no experience working in a business" and tied that to the sluggish recovery.

But at Bain, Romney's top priority wasn't to boost employment. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, creating jobs "wasn't the aim of Bain or other private-equity firms, which measure success by returns produced for investors." And, the newspaper reported, Romney's 100,000-jobs claim is tough to evaluate.

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.

The video was included in a CD-ROM created in 1998 to mark the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that gave birth to Bain Capital. Here is the full clip, as it appeared on that CD-ROM (the editing occurred within the original):

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. say good night, stench.

[Grown2Hate]

2. Drip... Drip... Drip... NT

[trumad]

3. Wow

Dude makes Gordon Gekko look like Mother Teresa.

[Justice]

4. Harvesting money

[roguevalley]

41. what a horrible vampiric nazified word to use. it makes my skin crawl

[BeyondGeography]

5. Fuck 'em and forget 'em

Capitalism's version of the one-night stand.

[Hubert Flottz]

6. No remorse then

No remorse now...for the lives he ruined and the hardship he caused.

Just like W only worse.

[TroyD]

7. Hopefully this wil finish off Romney's claim that his main priority was creating jobs

This is more proof that he was indeed a vulture capitalist.

And less than one week before the debate!

Think the Obama team will use this against Romney?

[enough]

8. If corporations are people, this is Soylent Green. (nt)

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

10. You SO beat me to it...

That's exactly what I was thinking.

This is Vulture Capitalism at its worst.

Bain Capital is not about creating jobs or a stable economy. It's about "harvesting" profits in whatever way necessary.

[nc4bo]

9. I'm ready to seal the deal with the likes of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

We need to GOTV - I'm thinking it will need to be approaching landslide numbers.

[fasttense]

11. SO now corporations and people like Mitt have gone to

harvesting countries, like Greece, Spain and Ireland...who is next?

[MNBrewer]

16. +1

[Dalai_1]

12. Kick & R n/t

[Heather MC]

13. posting to watch later n/t

[DinahMoeHum]

14. Like I've said, he ain't RW Marriott, who was a REAL businessman

. . .a fellow Mormon who actually CREATED JOBS by building his business in hotels and entertainment.

Romney's not a businessman, he's a financier. Big fat hairy difference here.

[malaise]

15. Delish

Rec

[List left]

17. More Damning than the 47% video!

This seems to me to be more damning than the 47% video. He states very clearly his/Bain's goal is to fatten the cow and take it to slaughter. Precisely what he would do to America if elected.

[beac]

18. Translation:

Bain Capital picked up companies, got them so drunk they passed out then harvested their organs and left their corpses rotting in a skeevy hotel bathroom.

[bettyellen]

19. He's a REAPER- how very seasonal!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

20. a grim statement, that.

[grantcart]

21. Actually this video shows that Bain was started with the standard understanding of a venture

capitalist and later, under Romney turned into a vulture capitalsit machine.

Here Romney is laying out the standard OP of a venture capitalist, find underfunded companies and use a 5-8 year period to grow the company before looking for a return of investment. ROI (or harvesting) is what all companies do.

The fact that at this point he is not looking for a return on investment until a 5-8 year period shows that he wants Bain to use its consulting background to bring growth to the company and help launch companies that would be candidates for IPOs, like they did with Staples. This is all healthy and ethical.

What later happened, for example with KB Toys, is that Bain became more of a vulture capital company using its capital to leaverage a profitable company, bust it out with huge debt, pay off the investors immediately, burden the company with massive debts and send the company to the graveyard.

Bain was originally a mangement consulting company that offered services for a fee. Romney is laying out the rationale on why a consulting company would move from a fee based service to a venture capital company that would not be paid for advice but use its expertise to help take companies to a higher level. Nothing nefarious in this video but it shows how far Romney would take the foundations of Bain into the darkest regions of leaverage buyouts.

[nichomachus]

33. "harvest" may be a legitimate term to the VC community

But to the average American it sounds predatory. That's what really matters.

[grantcart]

40. No I think its a pretty weird word for the business community and it does sound predatory.

It may be revealing that Romney had those subconscious instincts back then.

But the substance of his speach was a perfect reasonable venture capital formula; high risk investments with a 5-8 year pay off.

That is not a get rich quick scheme, which is what Bain turned into.

I think it makes Romney look worse because he started in the right direction and deliberately took it off the rails for personal greed.

[Raster]

44. I work in the financial industry and I am very familiar with the VC community...

...Rmoney and Bain are NOT Venture Capitalists. Venture capitalists are into helping create companies, bankroll them, help them get successful and then take their profit. Rmoney and Bain are VULTURE capitalists, and even worse, they themselves cause the situations that force companies to go under. This truly is vulture capitalism at it's very worst. And yes, "harvesting companies" is NOT a term the VCs use and is as predatory as it gets.

[raouldukelives]

38. Yeah, it sounded like SOP for Wall St to me.

We watch them do this, see how much money they make, decide it's for us as well and start working for them, handing over proceeds out of every minute of labor we toil to help them finance harvesting of our world and its resources in the hopes to share a little in the proceeds, to feel a little more like Mitt.
It's a good thing for the corporations so many want to share in the ownership of its ends. Otherwise those who gain nothing by the destruction of our last vestiges of the natural world might be joined by more voices.

[NCLefty]

22. Hide ya businesses, hide ya medicare, hide ya organs

'cause they harvestin' ERRBODY up in hee'yuh!

[JRLeft]

23. Bain was all about extracting every penny out of their acquisitions.

[4lbs]

24. Doesn't even mention "jobs" once in that clip. We need a larger amount of it to see if he does

at any point of his speech.

His way of speaking words and phrases without any real meaning to those that do actual work reminds me of some of the 1990s dot-com business plans:

"We want to develop a synergistic environment between entitites that maximizes potential and creates a pathway between businesses that quickly results in positive performance and a more desirable balance."

mmmmm-kay....

[MADem]

26. Greed is good! He's a real-life Gordon Gekko! nt

[jmowreader]

39. There are many real-life Gekkos

Romney was the worst of the breed; his rate of failure is too high. If we HAVE to have a raider president, Ted Forstmann the anti-junk bond king would be okay.

[MADem]

25. HARVESTING....the way he says it, it's like ORGANS, not crops...! nt

[gopiscrap]

27. Hope the MSM widely dissemenates this video also!!!

Rmoney is a human vulture!!!!!

[ashling]

28. Harvest time!

[hue]

29. Indeed the Grim Reaper! Salivating to harvest the USA!

[nichomachus]

30. What struck me most about this

Is how smooth and polished he is, not at all like he is in his campaign speeches.

It was the same in the 47% video -- very articulate.

When he's talking about screwing working people, he's really really smooth. When he's talking about caring about people, he can't put five words together without a gaffe.

Bush was the same way. When he was talking about killing, bombing, punishing, screwing the poor, he was eloquent. When he tried to pretend to care about people, he sounded like a semi-literate schmuck.

Tells you a lot about both of them.

[caseymoz]

42. Evildoers? That's eloquent?

I'm sorry, when Bush was talking about "killing, bombing, punishing, screwing the poor," he would sometimes rise to the eloquence of a 1960s comic book. Not especially gaffe-prone, but it made you wonder what universe you were living in.

Romney's haplessness as a political speaker in contrast to his glibness as a business speaker belies his claim that running a business is anything like running a government.

[Digit]

31. Romney wants to harvest America's assets

His plan for some of our National Parks http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CDkQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fed.msnbc.com%2F_news%2F2012%2F08%2F28%2F13531472-romney-energy-plan-drill-our-national-parks%3Flite&ei=zXVkUL_GPKrg0gH7iYHIAg&usg=AFQjCNERueO58pGtmG6HMKtfs7BdWbouEg&sig2=wwmv_YQIY5beNMD4z_GSfQ

From the Ed Show August 28, 2012
<snip>
"Romney energy plan: drill our national parks
Mitt Romney released his energy plan last week, and it’s filled with disturbing proposals that would jeopardize public lands. It specifically says:

“States will be empowered to establish processes to oversee the development and production of all forms of energy on federal lands within their borders, excluding only lands specially designated off-limits”

This policy would open up national parks, national forests, state parks and state forests to oil companies for drilling. In order to satisfy his big oil donors, Romney would jeopardize a national pastime that is open to EVERYONE. Romney thinks it’s OK to stomp all over the hard work of preservationists like the great Theodore Roosevelt."
<snip>

There's more at the link

From Daily Kos Sept 18, 2012
<snip>
"How to Bain America http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/18/1133589/-Romney-How-to-Bain-America

Think of the US as a targeted company, and of his donors as his lenders. Ask yourself what security he has promised to his superpacs and contributors. What do they get in exchange?

Think of the Koch brothers. What do they want? They want an end to enforcement of environmental and competition laws. The asset that will be liquidated to satisfy their debt is our forests, our water and our competitive environment, allowing them to operate as they choose and rake in more profits at the expense of our future.

Think of social security. Many of his contributors don't like making the employer's portion of the payment. Consider social security the American form of a funded pension plan. He has promised to liquidate this asset to fund tax cuts for his contributors."
<snip>

These are things which he has already stated and there is so much more he refuses to discuss precisely because it might be UNPOPULAR. It really makes you wonder what he is NOT saying.

....and you thought Bush was bad for our country.

I fear our great country, all of it's citizens and our future generations would never recover.

[L0oniX]

32. Corporate grim reaper!

[nolabear]

37. This year's Halloween costume.

Perfect.

[nichomachus]

34. You have to wonder how many more of these damning videos are out there

One a week from now until the election and it will be a landslide.

This headline has been in the Yahoo top stories all day

[TroyD]

35. I'm assuming it will be on all the political shows tonight (except FOX perhaps)

Ed Shultz, Rachel Maddow etc. will no doubt cover it.

FOX may try to ignore it.

[Cha]

36. David Corn and Mother Jones are coming through

for us! With a little help from their friends! Can't exclude mitt... once again exposing himself as his own WORST ENEMY.

Thanks TroyD!

[iemitsu]

43. did romney make this tape so he could continue

to sell the magic of bain remotely by having underlings do the presentation then using the film as a final hook?
i didn't know that morons were subject to karma.

[underpants]

45. 1985- a mover and shaker - saying this BS....and he wasn't doing coke??

okay maybe not Mitt but seriously that whole operation has a stench of the mid-8o's a-holes that abounded at the time....still do

[oldsarge54]

46. MBA/CEO versus Leadership

What killed the middle class was the pass needed to get into the upper echelons of the business world, the MBA. Balance sheets and the bottom line have transformed workers into a debit on the balance sheet. Now, note I did not say American workers. The reason is the balance sheet doesn’t care one way or the other who incurs the cost, just that the figure is a cost.

Presidents of companies had a sense of ownership, pride in what the company stands for and a feeling of their workers being partners in their enterprise. Consider Henry Ford, and his son. They took care of their workers because they knew the workers would care for them, and it worked.

Using Ford again as a model, Ford succeeded because it had a new idea. Instead of automobiles being a luxury item for the rich, it would be transportation for the ordinary man. The fact that Ford paid their workers more than anyone else in the business, with idea that his own workers should be able to afford his products, did not hurt. Today, corporations do not originate new ideas. They let some entrepreneurs develop the idea, build a company, and then make the person who built the business an offer they cannot refuse.

Union wages hell. Let’s consider the American psyche. Would high prices drive a factory away, or would the attraction of paying less than $10 a day and not worry about any US government labor laws. For that matter, with a suitable bribe, obeying any local labor laws. US corporations with overseas locations are used to managing serfs.

Mitt is the penultimate MBA generation corporate leader. The workers are just a line item, and your duty and responsibility is ONLY to the stockholders. This is one reason I fear the closed door fund raisers, long before the 47% comment was recorded. Are these “donors” the new nations “stockholders” in the mind of the MBA potential president?

[TroyD]

47. This video isn't getting enough play in the media

We need to get it out there more.

People need to realize that when he says he was a job creator he is lying - this video shows he was interested in 'harvesting' companies.