"The Bain Train"

As the rough and tumble primary moves on to South Carolina, Romney is being attacked from the left over his so-called "vulture capitalism" while being CEO of Bain Capital. Sadly this "left" attack, I call it the "Bain Train", comes from Obama, Gingrich, Perry, and to some extent Santorum. What the hell are these so-called Conservatives doing joining the Democrats in their battle on capitalism?

First of all I am not a Romney fan.  But I am a 'venture capitalist" fan. There is no question that if Romney wins the nomination that the Obama machine will portray him as the "Gordon Gecko" of Wall Street. But I can't believe our side is throwing gas into those flames. I have some experience with venture capital companies and like everything else there are a few bad apples, but without those companies many of the corporations we are all familiar with today (that employ millions of people) would not exist.  I have no idea if Bain did any "dishonest" deals, but I did some research today.  When Romney started the company they had assets of $37 million to invest, today Bain and it's affiliates are "managing" $66 billion in assets.

I put quotes around "managing" because that's what venture capitalist's do. They take investor's money (if they want to invest it) and risk it on companies that have a potential to make profits, offering them a higher return than they could get elsewhere - IF they are willing to take the risk.  The key word is "risk". When I started my high tech company in the late 70's, the failure rate of high tech companies was two failures for every success.  Would you take those odds? Remember the .com "bubble" in the 90's - some like Microsoft, Dell, and Oracle were successful, but many more went "bust". 

I don't know anything about Bain's performance, but the fact that they have grown so much over the years certainly indicates that they have done a good job for their investors.  When venture capitalists take over companies that are in trouble or struggling, they restructure and bring in new management and hopefully turn them around; and in some cases the company is too far gone and they have to put them through bankruptcy. Do people lose their jobs, of course? But if Bain went from $37 million to $66 billion in assets managed, a lot of jobs must have been created along the way by those successes.

Investing in high risk companies is like gambling, and gamblers only tell you about the times they won. The dialog about Bain Capital should be open and then voters can decide whether they did a good job for their investors (and the country) or not. But that will probably not happen - if Romney is the nominee the Obama machine will only tell you about those Bain Capital "gambling losses" and all the people that lost their jobs along the way. We don't need  people on our side to help them with that false message.