There’s nothing to look at! Move on! Bill Clinton appeared on Piers Morgan last night.
Morgan was in an undisclosed location. In his absence, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein sat in for the fatuous host.
Eventually, Weinstein raised the question of Bain Capital. We were quite struck by Clinton’s response:
WEINSTEIN (5/31/12): Governor Romney keeps talking about his experience at Bain Capital as a producer of jobs and that he had 25 years in the private sector. It seems to play with a certain group. But do you think that really will affect people and think that he can produce jobs that the president can't?That statement by Clinton is very strange. It's also very revealing.
CLINTON: I think it will affect some people who relate well to businessmen. And I think he had a good business career. The— There’s a lot of controversy about that.
But if you go in and you try to save a failing company—and you and I have friends here who invest in companies—you can invest in a company, run up the debt, loot it, sell all the assets, and force all the people to lose their retirement and fire them.
Or you can go into a company, have cutbacks, try to make it more productive with the purpose of saving it. And when you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed. Not every movie you made was a smash hit.
WEINSTEIN: That's for sure.
CLINTON: So I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work. This is good work. I think, however, the real issue ought to be, what has Governor Romney advocated in the campaign that he will do as president? What has President Obama done and what does he propose to do? How do these things stack up against each other? That's the most relevant thing.
There's no question that in terms of getting up and going to the office and, you know, basically performing the essential functions of the office, the man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold. But they have dramatically different proposals. And it's my opinion, anyway, that the Obama proposals and the Obama record will be far better for the American economy and most Americans than those that Governor Romney has laid out. And that's what the election ought to be about.
According to Clinton, people can “invest in companies” two different ways:
On the one hand, they “can invest in a company, run up the debt, loot it, sell all the assets, and force all the people to lose their retirement and fire them.”
(They can loot the company, Bill Clinton said! Loot it! Those were his words!)
On the other hand, people who invest in companies “can have cut-backs, try to make it more productive with the purpose of saving it.”
No one would criticize the second approach. But what about that first approach? What about people who “loot a company, sell all the assets, and force all the people to lose their retirement?” Is that an honorable way to do business?
Next question: Is that the way Mitt Romney behaved at various times at Bain Capital?
It has become amazingly clear—our major elites simply refuse to answer that second question! Clinton slithered right past it last night, even as he acknowledged that private equity firms sometimes “loot” the companies they acquire, making everyone lose their retirements. Having described this process of looting, he was soon saying this:
“So I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work.”
Really? If people loot a business and make everyone lose their pensions, we shouldn’t say that is bad work?
Is that the way Mitt Romney behaved? That’s what Reuters reported, five months ago, concerning that steel mill in Kansas City. That same week, David Cay Johnston said there may be other such skeletons in Romney’s business closet.
But from that day right up to this, major elites from the New York Times down have refused to explore this question. It isn’t just the slimy Cory Booker, best pal to the slimy Rachel Maddow. Almost all our major elites are taking a pass on this question.
Have you seen Maddow explore that question? No! And you never will!
Did Romney “loot” those workers’ pensions? (That’s the word Clinton used.) The New York Times has totally ducked this question—but so have the fiery folk at Salon! This includes the increasingly ludicrous Joan Walsh, last seen hotly defending the Times for its inane front-page "news report" about Ann Romney’s dressage.
The Times devoted 2300 words to the lady’s dressage—but it has barely said a word about the way her husband looted those pensions! Yesterday, Walsh defended the Times on dressage. But she refuses to note the way the Times has ducked the question of looting.
Gaze on the way our elites do their business! None of these folk will challenge the people who loot the pensions of working-class people! As we have told you, year after year:
Darlings! It just isn't done!
Your country is ruled by horrid elites—and slithering climbers want to get theirs. Cory Booker is part of that class, but so is the increasingly ludicrous Walsh. As for Clinton, he talked about the looting of pensions, then quickly said this: Let’s move on!
Let’s move on, the president said. There’s nothing to look at! Move on!
The key locution in this fandango: "And you and I have friends here who invest in companies."
I'm not sure here.
ReplyDeleteClinton may have done something smart.
In saying you can go in and loot a company like Romney, he'll get air play.
But will it score Romney any points?
"of course you can go in and rape 7-year-olds like the candidate did". Wow.
Because as you noticed, no one talks about actually stealing the pensions.
Clinton says there are 2 ways to do it - let the public decide. I wouldn't have said so, but his may be the smartest tactic.
"That statement by Clinton is very strange."
DeleteThere is nothing strange about Clinton's statement at all.
The private equity industry primarily uses two different methods to take over a company : 1) the leveraged buyout (LBO) and 2) Venture capital.
All Clinton is doing is defining both of these methods and cautioning against lumping them together because they are very different.
In othe words, all private equity companies aren't the same and they shouldn't all be criticized.
He's left it to the Obama campaign to explain why the LBO using Bain Capital is one of the bad guys.
One way to see the difference between the two approaches is by the amount of time involved. The LBO "looting" approach is typically done very quickly -- in just a few days or weeks. The investor finds a company who's stock price is so low that he can buy the company and immediately repay himself out of company surplus -- a process that substantially weakens the company.
DeleteOTOH the approach used by Bain typically involved long-term effort working with a troubled company. E.g., Bain spent 8 years trying to save the steel company that Bob was writing about recently.
"Bain spent 8 years trying to save the steel company that Bob was writing about recently."
DeleteAbsolute bullshit.
It was a typical LBO. Length of ownership has nothing to do with it.
Bain piled on the debt and took their management fees upfront from that new debt.
It was an LBO at its worst.
Bain profited whether the company survived or not.
In fact, it takes years to properly loot a company, you ignorant troll. You can't just go in and liquidate stuff and keep the proceeds -- if you could, that would be low hanging fruit, and you'd have lots of competitors driving up the price of the company to the point where it wouldn't be economical. Basically, they make money by siphoning it from their ongoing operations, by shortchanging R&D and modernization, squeezing the workers on their wages, underfunding pension plans -- these things take years. Go back to Rush and Sean and Townhall and wait for a new, less ridiculous, bit of nonsense to repeat.
DeleteTRA, of course Bain profited whether the company survived or not. That's just sensible business.
DeleteIf you were signing a long-term contract with a nearly bankrupt company, wouldn't you insist on a guarantee that you'd be paid for your work? Otherwise, why would you do business with them at all? Why would you voluntarily assume the risk that the company would go bankrupt and stiff you?
Average Internet Leftist -- I once considered participating in a leveraged buyout of an insurance company I had previously worked for. At the time, the total price of all their stock was less than their (reported) surplus. The idea was for a holding company to borrow enough money to buy a controlling interest in the stock, then pay a special dividend up to the holding company, and use that dividend money to immediately repay the loan. The effect would have been to buy the company with its own money. This would have been perfectly legal.
I guess by your standard, we wouldn't have "properly" looted the company, but so what? BTW "proper looting" is an amusing oxymoron.
It would have been "perfectly legal," but you didn't do it. Why? Because legal or not, it wouldn't have been profitable, whatever you now say to the contrary. Because if it was, you would have done it. People don't leave easy money on the table, troll.
DeleteBut, but, but, Maddow wrote a book! An important book! A very, very, important book! A very, very, very important book! And gay marriage! Romney's dog! Mouth breathing conservatives! Gay marriage! Yes we can! Obama is a Great Political Chessplayer! Besides, no one listens to Maddow anyway, but I'm still going defend her because she's an important, vital cog in the left wing message machine, even though she never talks about anything important to real left wingers. And even if she did, it wouldn't matter because she's irrelevant! So stop attacking her, because we need her desperately!
ReplyDeleteActually, not only did Maddow write an important book, I'd like to see some serious give and take on bit She did on the Florida voter purges. Nothing from the Howler on this, but to the snarky, foolish poster here (aping Maddow at her worst) The Defense Budget is no doubt an over covered issue of little important. You cannot attach any hard currency to these post boxes, but it might be instructive to see they type of righties the TDH now attracts.
DeleteAnd anyone who disagrees with me must be a "righty," because I am the embodiment of all things left wing. I am clever and smart and enlightened and forward thinking, and dismissive of anyone who doesn't think I'm as clever and smart and enlightened and forward thinking as I know I am. I decide what's important to the left wing, to hell with all those peons out there. Besides, lots of them are against gay marriage, the racists, plus they believe in god and go to church and speak with hick accents, so they don't count, the deluded fools!
DeleteAd hominem attacks: the last refuge of the stupid.
DeleteAnon 4:25:
DeleteIf your comment was intentionally hilarious, kudos!
Instructive how my measured comment is transformed by the AIL at 3:46 to a blanket reactionary statement. The death of discourse?
DeleteFrom pointless namecalling ("snarky, foolish") to wailing about "the death of discourse." You're the left wing version of "David in Cal." Perhaps you have a few IQ points on him, but then again, maybe yopu don't, and it wouldn't be anything to brag about if you did, anyway.
DeleteIt's unlikely I'll bother responding to you again, because you aren't worth even parodying further, so you get a free shot at more namecalling and crying about it. ta ta.
Good to see that Slick Willy is still slick.
ReplyDeleteGiven the hard to refute work Robert Scheer has done on the effects of Clinton's economic performance, these strange comments seem not so strange. Between that and Hil's leadership in Afghanistan, we must reflect on their legacy more in sorrow than in anger, as they say, and failing grades all around.
ReplyDeleteMr Clinton of course was an adviser to and a partner in Yucaipa funds, private equity funds run by Ron Burkle. So Mr Clinton knows the virtues of private equity first hand.
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB123716092427335513.html
He also know the difference between venture capital and an LBO which is the mininmum you should know if you want to discuss private equity firms.
DeleteOh, my God, now Bob is doing the kind of selective editing and willful misreading he used to decry. Bob writes:
ReplyDelete“So I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work.”
Really? If people loot a business and make everyone lose their pensions, we shouldn’t say that is bad work?
Clinton OBVIOUSLY means that "we" should only call equity investing "bad work" IF it is done by "looting." It's clear and obvious. It's not "slithering." It's plain as day.
Bob is so around the bend, so dug in on his brilliant insights into the one right way of speaking about every blessed issue, that he's become a ghost of his former self. It's pathetic.
I think you are right flipyrwig. Somerby was sloppy here.
DeleteInterestingly though, if you go over to Slate you can find John Dickerson presenting Clinton's comments as a blanket vindication of Romney's work at Bain. Talk about sloppy!
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/06/the_economic_news_is_dire_for_obama_re_election_campaign_but_there_are_three_small_bright_spots_.html
The main point of Somerby's piece is that Clinton refused to talk about how Romney's Bain Capital, in the case of one steel firm, selected option 1. The entire political establishment has deflected the issue from the should-be-criminal looting approach in one Bain buyout (with the implication that there are others) over to the paper tiger issue of 'is private equity bad'. Clinton in his false sincerity way endorsed, echoed and advanced the Washington Consensus on the topic.
DeleteFairleft, I think that's, well, fair, but I don't think that's Bob's actual critique of Clinton's appearance. Or, if it is, he tripped all over it in his rush to find Clinton inexcusably vile. I think it's evident that Clinton was saying that there's no reason to deplore private equity as a concept, but instead to isolate the times when it has involved -- to use Bob's One Right Term -- "looting," and criticize those occurrences on their own merits. You're right that Clinton doesn't then proceed to _do_ that, which Bob points out. But Bob's line about how Clinton won't call "looting" "bad work" is a cheap shot. And Bob does this kind of thing more and more and more
DeleteYeah, Bob could've made his point much more succinctly, and just plain better. He's always been imperfect that way, but it's getting a bit worse recently.
DeleteOTOH, Clinton dissapeared the actual Obama criticism of Romney, which was an attack on the sleaze involving the steel company (and likely other Bain targets), and instead amplified and advanced (by providing mebbe thoughtful nuance to) the fake and silly 'is private equity bad' narrative. 'No, not always bad, just sometimes' ... well, du-uh!
FWIW, I expanded on the thoughts above with this firedog post (Romney/Booker/Clinton vs GST Steelworkers: http://my.firedoglake.com/fairleft/2012/06/03/romneybookerclinton-vs-gst-steel-workers/#comment-267935
DeleteClinton wants to keep the doors to private equity jobs open for himself, Chelsea, and Hillary. So he's willing to throw workers to the wolves to do so - at the same time that he's campaigning against Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Sad.
ReplyDeleteThe articles about this are reporting it as "Clinton says Romney had sterling business career!" almost as if Clinton is endorsing Romney. Alarming. For real, half the time Clinton opens his mouth, it's some kind of slam on Obama - or if it isn't quite, the press still reports it that way.
I think the headline here is that the Howler has discovered, after all these years, that the Clinton he thinks served "progressive" interests is a stooge for corporate power. Some of us kinda noticed that 15-20 years ago. Some even "slept in the woods" rather than rise to defend the guy who comforted the wealthy.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to review the archives of TDH, as Somerby never presented Clinton in such a fashion. He didn't make common cause with the absolute worst of the right in an attempt to "get Clinton" as many "progressives" did.
Delete"Have you seen Maddow explore that question? No! And you never will!"
ReplyDeleteUm, what about her May 14, 2012 broadcast spending 15 minutes on Bain Capital, including the destruction of the pension fund at the Kansas City company? Does that somehow not count, or is The Howler's obsession with attacking Maddow personally under any and all circumstances causing him to get sloppy? Too much of that previously uncharacteristic sloppiness will tear down the credibility built up over a number of years fast -- a lot faster than it took to build it.
You can criticize Maddow for saying it cost "the taxpayers" to clean up (in part) the pension mess Bain created because the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is funded by the pension sponsors themselves, and not directly be general revenue tax funds. That is a specious line of attack, however, since those contributions one way or the other are charged back either to the pension funds -- to the detriment of beneficiaries -- or to the sponsor's customers. (You can be sure they don't come out of shareholders' dividends or senior executive compensation.)
Nice catch, Urban.
DeleteAgreed. Good catch Urban Legend, but the word "explore" might be the operative one for the point Somerby is making. This is the extent of what Maddow said about the pension fund [my emphasis]:
Delete>>>>>...Right now in 2012, Mr. Romney does not want to run on his record as Massachusetts governor. He wants to run on Bain. He wants to run on what he did for America at Bain.
It`s because he has put Bain at the center of his campaign, as really his sole credential for the presidency, that explains why details about what he did at Bain can be so devastating to his candidacy. What he actually did at Bain may be the most devastating things that will be said about Mr. Romney throughout the entire campaign.
So, if that`s the case, you have to wonder strategically, is president`s re-election campaign doing this too soon? It is only May, after all. You would think they would want to save the Bain thing so it would be ringing through voters` ears 5 1/2 months from now when people are going to the polls.
Turns out, don`t worry. There`s plenty more where this came from. One thing the Ted Kennedy campaign used against Mitt Romney back in 2004 -- excuse me, back in 1994, that the Obama campaign has not yet used is the fact that as Mr. Romney and company shut down the American factories and made tens of millions of dollars for themselves and put hundreds of Americans out of work, they also sometimes shut down the factories and put people out of work and [in] a way that made sure that you, the American taxpayer, would have to cover the laid off workers` pension costs. Yes.
So Bain and company profited. Taxpayers had to clean up behind them for all the people they laid off. Private profit, public risk. Does that sound familiar?
Big action by big business. That is hugely profitable. But when it goes bad, the people who took those big risks, they who got rich off them, they didn`t have to pay for them going pad, taxpayers had to pay for them going bad. That is part of the Romney at Bain story the Obama campaign is going to roll out later in the campaign.
The taxpayers having to pick up the pensions after Romney and company ran off with the company`s money? Yes, I think that`s still to come.
But that story -- that story about the public having to clean up after people in private business got very rich taking a big risk, that story is also, of course, the exact same story of what caused the financial collapse in 2008, the great recession. Right? The reason our economy still sucks even though it`s getting better -- big banks taking huge risks that they got rich off but when they inevitably went bad, taxpayers had to come to the rescue. All of the upside is private. All of the potential downside is public. That`s a very special kind of capitalism, I mean socialism. I mean capitalism.
Since the Wall Street collapse at the end of the Bush administration and the bailout of the financial sector, think what you will about that rescue, whether or not it ought to have happened. Since then, since the financial sector got rescued by the taxpayer, things have been awesome on Wall Street ever since....<<<<<
Howler wrote: "Your country is ruled by horrid elites—and slithering climbers want to get theirs.". Whatever else I think about him, no truer words were ever written. And I put 'all of them', but perhaps Bernie Sanders, and few others, in the group Howler outlined. Romney, Obama, Clinton (especially Clinton), all of them.
ReplyDeleteI think Clinton was saying there are sleazy motivations and good ones, and that in his view Bain falls into the second category.
ReplyDeleteOr, maybe Clinton was saying that there could have been times Bain acted well and times when Bain acted poorly, and you are walking a very precarious tightrope when you try to say Bain -- and by extension all venture capitalists -- acted poorly all the time.
DeleteI think it's rather clear that Clinton is saying that equity firms can have either sleazy motivations or honorable ones, so let's not overdo criticizing equity firms as a concept and instead focus on the sleazy incidents.
DeleteI don't think it is a "tightrope" at all. I think there is a difference btwn "venture capitalists" and private equity. The latter parley their money, legal understanding, and political connections into gaming a system they often had a hand in design. They know where the loop holes are buried, so speak, because they, or their friends, more often than not buried them.
DeleteScrew them...they act "poorly" enough of the time.
Venture capitalists, at least in theory, provide funding for what is supposed to be a better way to produce a mouse trap.
The private equity guys are vampires, preying on society. But who among our 'elite' does not feed at their troughs? Or hope to, anyway, one day.
Go after the general practice...not some random outcome. And when they complain....'class warfare or some such shit, tell them, 'whom the cap fits, let him wear it'. And know a lot of people are gonna defend them. So friggin what? Lines are drawn...and as the old song goes, 'which side are ya on?'.
Some private equity is venture capitalism, and other private equity is looting. Thus private equity isn't the problem in and of itself, but when it's used to loot and destroy, it is. Yes, because I am not at home in that world myself it seems like a waste of effort to defend the good guys of private equity/investing/hedge funds/whatever, but some filthy rich people are liberals and Democrats too, so people like Cory Booker and Bill Clinton don't want to call out the rich, or the investing class, across the board. They (at least in Clinton's case) want to highlight only the worst cases. Thus, their view is that it's worth it to hit Romney on the bad stuff Bain did, but don't attack the kind of business Bain was/is, because that will only serve to indict bigwigs who run the same kind of business but don't have the same record of doing that bad stuff.
DeleteNo, it matters not a rats ass what I think...but let me at least be clear about it. I would challenge the practice of "private equity" on its face. It is a predatory game, overwhelming practiced by vampires.
DeleteI read and re-read Clinton's comments and see nothing unreasonable or inaccurate. And why is Booker vile exactly? A bright young man who devotes his career to public service? He could be making a fortune on Wall St and summering in the Hamptons, but he chooses instead to be....mayor of Newark.
ReplyDeleteOh, I know: he's friends with Rachel Maddow. That must make him vile be definition.
Clinton assisted with Booker and the MSM in disappearing what Romney's Bain Capital did to the GST steelworkers -- the one subject of the Obama TV ad -- over to the stupid and fake issue, "Is private equity bad?" A simple and transparent move, I think. But hey, stick around, you'll gradually understand the basic rhetorical tricks better and better if you remain an avid Howler fan.
DeleteI don't think there's a conspiracy to disappear anything. It's more that Obama launched a reasonable attack on Romney at Bain, the Republicans squawked about how it was really an attack on good old American free enterprise, and non-Obama Democrats and the major media fell over themselves accepting the Republican framing. That's where the "is private equity bad?" non-issue came from. Then the media and Republicans got to move the ball even further downfield with their tried-and-true "Democrats in disarray" meta-narrative and its increasingly common variant, "tensions between Clinton and Obama."
DeleteObama will make tens of millions of dollars once he leaves office; he's already made several millions. Booker can hop over to Wall Street and make millions whenever he pleases, particularly if he makes it to the Senate (or higher) and continues being a faithful lapdog to money and power. But Booker is now a hero, someone we should admire and support, even as he helps turn what's left of the Democratic Party over to Wall Street. Let's hope even internet leftists aren't so stupid and blinded by race issues that they fall for Obama II.
DeleteWhen they advance the Republican spin the Wall Street Democrats know what they're doing. No one said anything about conspiracy but they're not doing it by accident or out of stupidity either. They intend the outcome that likely has already resulted, another (very limited) attack on out-of-control financial capitalism thwarted. And, of course, increased positive mainstream press and campaign donations for the 'responsible Democrat'.
DeleteClinton was trying to express that the Bain thing is not really relevant. That American voters would be better served by seeing Romney compare and contrast his views on issues he will actually face if he's elected to those of President Obama. But he and many of the rest of us are pissing in the wind if we hope for that. Both sides know their bases will hold and they WANT us - those of us in the middle - to pull the lever based on a comic book presentation.
ReplyDeleteTo see what a real looting looks like, consider the looting of American Universal Insurance Company by Charles Christopher. This lawsuit pleading gives some of the details.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine, Charles Cook, was the CEO at the time Christpher acquired the company. What Christopher did was to borrow money from organized crime to buy the company. The company's assets were quite a bit more than the purchase price (due to offsetting liabilities.) Christopher stole those assets, paid back his loan, and fled the country.
From the pleading, you can see that once Chrisopher controlled American Universal, he had the company
-- buy his house for $1.7 million,
-- lend $5.4 to a corporation which Christopher's brother was President of
-- purchase $3.4 million om defaulted promissary notes from a company that Christpher was in trouble with -- a transaction that was intended to benefit Christopher's financial situation at AUIC's expense.
Years later, Christopher was convicted for his crime. He was sentenced to consecutive terms totaling 121 months of imprisonment on three of the counts of conviction.
Obviously, Bain's efforts to save the companies they dealt with don't look anything like this real looting example.
That guy in Florida who ate the other guy's face? THAT'S not cannibalism. REAL cannibalism is eating lots of peoples' faces, and the rest of their bodies, too! Jeffrey Dahmer, now THAT guy was a cannibal. The Florida guy's attempt to clean the other guy's face by eating the lice from it doesn't look anything like what Jeffrey Dahmer did!
DeleteIt isn't just that you're a troll -- internet trolls are everywhere. It's that you're such a stupid one.
Another example, but less clear-cut, is Home Insurance Company. All the following is based on rumor. Nobody was ever prosecuted in this case.
ReplyDeleteHome was put into a holding company called Ambase, which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange IIRC. I bought some Ambase stock and lost money when the company went bankrupt.
I've been told that certain top management did various actions that benefited them, rather than the company. The one I specifically recall involved their handling of certain employee retirement funds. I don't think it was a 401k, but it may have been something similar.
Anyhow, manangement had the right to direct the investment of these funds. I was told that, in order to prop up the price of the Ambase stock, management directed that all these employee retirement funds be totally invested in the stock of Ambase. As a result, when the firm went bankrupt, not only did the employees lose their jobs, they lost the value of this retirement fund.