Men We Love: Matt Taibbi

Truth.  I’ve never understood the private equity segment of the market.  What little I did “get” didn’t make any sense to me.  Now I get it, thanks to Matt Taibbi’s latest piece for Rolling Stone Magazine,  Greed and Debt:  The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

Taibbi rolls out a number of examples of companies that had the life sucked out of them by this transactional business model.  KB Toys, Ampad, and others fell victim once Bain set their sights on these companies.  These are cautionary tales.

Read this, it will prepare you for what’s ahead should Governor Romney prevail in November.  I am hopeful that it may inspire you to do what you can to assure he doesn’t.

 


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7 responses to “Men We Love: Matt Taibbi”

  1. griftdrift Avatar
    griftdrift

    You just did. Thanks Ed!

  2. ire Avatar
    ire

    What about the one where I was like “good post grift!”

    Oh, right it never happened.

  3. Jen B. Avatar
    Jen B.

    “Do you really want the government to tell you what you can and can’t do.”

    “No, that’s why I vote Libertarian.” – Libertarians

  4. griftdrift Avatar
    griftdrift

    My favorite comment ever

  5. Helen Avatar
    Helen

    Are You all nuts?? I didn’t like Bush, I liked Obama even less but I have a good feeling about Romney.
    Only a seasoned businessman can take this country and get it on it’s feet again.
    Journalists and the media are supposed to have the integrity to be objective and put aside their own views and report truthfully. Unfortunately, this is not so today here or anywhere else in the media.

    Why doesn’t the media report truthfully about Obama’s views, he borders on communism. Do you really want the government to tell you what you can and can’t do.

    If you are not afraid of the real truth before you go and vote so that the US ends up asd a communist country go and see 2016. Have an open mind.

  6. Joel Avatar
    Joel

    Taibbi is one of the great political and economic investigative journalists around, who deserves far more credit and far more attention that he already gets.

    His Rolling Stone articles since the meltdown of 08 have been nothing short of a brilliant indictment of the fools who got us into the mess in the first place.

  7. gette Avatar
    gette

    His Dad Mike has taught him the value of investigative reporting and he continues to provide us with quality journalistic information.

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