If you want to know the “real” Mitt Romney listen to him talk about Thomas Edison. Mitt really thinks of what he did at Bain Capital as an achievement equivalent to what Thomas Edison achieved in founding General Electric.
He equates scavenging with creating. As plenty of others have noted, he’s like a vulture who thinks he’s an eagle or a jackal who sees no difference between himself and a lion.
Edison is apparently one of his heroes. But it’s Edison the businessman not Edison the inventor he reveres.
That’s not quite right. It’s Edison the accumulator of wealth he reveres. He doesn’t see the inventor at work. He doesn’t see the businessman at work. He doesn’t see how the inventor and the businessman were inseparable. He just sees the money raining down.
And that’s what he sees as the purpose of government and the goal of public life, to keep the money raining down on today’s Edisons.
Except that as far as he’s concerned today’s Edisons are today’s Mitt Romneys.
They don’t invent.
They don’t build businesses based on providing goods and services.
They just rake in the dough any way they can get away with.
Photo via the Boston Globe.
There is, of course, a word for what Romney's talking about while he tries to say that's not what he's actually talking about. No, it's actually not "sociopathy." It's feudalism. We see the technicolor costumes and period context of Medieval feudalism (not the only case -- it's way too damn close to a default setting in human societies based on farming and permanent settlement) and miss the psychology, the sociology, and the evolutionary resilience. It has always been one of the two key strains in development of the Americas alongside idealism (specifically, the "bastard feudalism" that offered all the goodies of being atop a feudal dogpile without the hierarchy and accountability of church or crown) and it's made one hell of a comeback since Bretton Woods went away. And Mittens is one hell of a chipper fief-holder.
Posted by: El Jefe | Wednesday, April 04, 2012 at 05:45 PM
It hurts to agree with Newt, but this proves his claim that Bain looted and didn't stick to creative destruction. Romney is staking his entire justification for running for the presidency on his "business experience" and therefore his understanding of "how to create jobs." It turns out he actually has no "business experience" as most Americans understand it, and that he certainly wasn't in the business of "creating jobs" but instead commanded a firm whose purpose was in large part to suck the lifeblood out of struggling companies they could buy on the cheap and then spit out the remains, is the point.
As you note it makes it clear we better not change the White house to the Willard Hotel. The other issue is regulation of private equity. The SEC isn't involved as there are no longer shares on an exchange. Corporate codes are designed to protect shareholders not bondholders from management. Bankruptcy for profit is, at least, a field with significant recent innovation. I think the problem is that creditor protection (by bankruptcy courts) only starts after a payment is a dollar short or a day late (actually IIRC 60 days late).
At least I see now how Bain had an 88% return on investment over several years. It's a great plan: Invest $8 million to gain control of a company renamed GS Technologies Inc; get some doofuses to lend you $125 million; pay yourself a dividend of $34.1 million. Let's see--a $34 Million dividend to Bain and a $44 Million underfunding of pension obligations. Hmmmm....
Then after the debt service becomes an operating anchor, take a hike but be sure to call it "Free enterprise"!
And if people say that sucks, tell 'em they're just envious.
Posted by: Earl Bockenfeld | Wednesday, April 04, 2012 at 07:54 PM
I'm sympathetic to Romney's comparing himself to Edison, but that's because the Edison to whom he compares himself is the one so well-defined in The Prestige: the vicious man who could not produce a better technology (AC) but hired "goons" to disrupt presentations and destroy prototypes, limiting further growth while lining his own pockets.
Mitt Romney and that Thomas Edison are compatriots. The inventor, though: that's purely Edison.
Posted by: Ken Houghton | Sunday, April 08, 2012 at 07:43 PM