According to Boston Globe Magazine’s Scott Helman Mitt Romney’s political foes are going to
great lengths to make it the boogeyman of the 2012 race. The Boston private
equity firm is fighting back — but only to a point…
Several of the 140 companies in Bain Capital’s portfolio are
familiar to consumers. But if Bain isn’t
a name on most shoppers’ lips, it is increasingly familiar to political
consumers paying even minimal attention to this year’s presidential contest.
The firm, with $65 billion in assets, has been squarely in the political
limelight ever since Romney’s Republican primary rivals began knocking his
private-sector background as “vulture capitalism,” uncharitably describing his
nearly 15-year tenure actively running the place. Often that light has not
flattered, casting the company as an emblem of a lopsided system that’s great
for the wealthy (sweet returns for executives, advantageous tax rates) but less
so for the unwealthy (factory closures, layoffs, bankruptcies)….
Romney’s Bain career, which consisted of investing in
start-up companies and later taking over existing ones, not only made him
exceedingly rich, it has become, in his telling, his central qualification to
be president of the United States. The argument goes something like this: I
know how jobs come and go; ergo, I can fix the American economy. That may or
may not be a persuasive case in November…..
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