At Bain, Romney created wealth, not jobs

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, here was PolitiFact on Friday:

Romney was the company's founder, and we think it worth a broader look at Bain’s investment practices, starting in the early 1990s...

Our research shows that outsourcing was well established by the time Bain began buying shares in the companies described in the recent articles. To call these companies pioneers is a stretch.

"This had been going on for decades," said Tim Sturgeon a researcher who focuses on outsourcing at the Industrial Performance Center at MIT.

Outsourcing grew significantly starting in the early 1990s thanks in part to the expansion of the Internet and changes in the rules of international trade. Bain was one of scores of private equity firms that participated.

"They were part of the herd," said Sturgeon. "To say they picked the pioneers gives (Bain) too much credit for being innovative. It was a mainstream strategy by that point."

Every expert we contacted agreed that when Bain invested in the companies in question, it was counting on high returns that included the results of outsourcing.

Bain may not have been a pioneer of outsourcing, but it was deeply involved in it. Because it -- and Romney personally -- was all about making money, not creating jobs. If making money required that jobs be sent overseas, so be it. If making money required that jobs be destroyed without regard, you know, for the actual human beings in them, whatever.

So much of the talk right now, and understandably so, is about whether Romney was still at Bain, or still in some way responsible for its activities, after he left in 1999. But we also need to look at what Bain did, and what Romney himself oversaw and approved, before he left, that is, when he was fully in charge of the firm. There may have been some success stories, the ones Romney brings up to tout his business acumen, but the record in all its ugliness and brutality is getting clearer and clearer.

As Greg Sargent wrote yesterday: "The larger point here is that Romney's business background was about creating wealth -- regardless of the impact it had on American jobs -- and that in so doing, his company invested in firms that outsourced and ultimately moved jobs overseas, even as Romney remained listed as CEO and sole shareholder."

Care to go back on the talk-show circuit to try to defend yourself, Mitt?