Free | 23/6
Posted: 5/28/2012
Mitt Romney made a boatload of money for himself and his fellow fat cats. No doubt about it. Billions. But he made it the way Americans hate most -- Wall Street style wheeling and dealing.Americans hate it because when all that scheming went bad, when the market collapsed, it was the 99 percent who footed the bill to bailout Wall Street. The same is true of Romney and Bain. When Bain bankrupted the companies it bought -- and Bain did that shockingly often -- workers and Main Street businesses paid the price.Romney contends his money making as CEO of Bain qualifies him to be President of the United States. That's true if Americans believe money should flow out of their pockets, out of the cash registers of Main Street shops and into the Swiss bank accounts of Romney and his 1 percenter cronies.Here are some of Romney's victims, Main Street businesses owed money by just one bankrupted Bain company, American Pad and Paper Co. (Ampad): Technical Coatings Laboratory, owed $125,191.20 and paid in bankruptcy $237.03; Services Plus Inc., owed $12,064.71, paid $22.84; Crown Vantage, owed $32,155.26, paid $60.89.In the 15 years Romney ran Bain from 1984 to 1999, 22 percent of the companies it invested in went bankrupt or closed within eight years, according to a study by the Wall Street Journal.In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the bulk -- 70 percent -- of the $2.5 billion Bain made for investors during that time came from just 10 deals. Four of those ended up in bankruptcy as well -- killing jobs and jilting Main Street businesses. Despite that, Romney and the Bain investors fattened their Swiss bank accounts.More Main Street victims: Lakeway Container Inc., owed $47,143.56 by Ampad, paid $89.26 in bankruptcy; Olympic Adhesives, owed $6,566, paid $12.43; American Chain and Gear, owed $505.54, paid 96 cents. Bain's handling of Ampad illustrates how the rich extract money from these deals and leave behind wounded workers and Main Street shops. Bain