Yes; but we were in a strong position (flat but significant income / profit). Left to our own we would have expanded to created income growth…

There is some justice in the world, though, because I heard later that, at the end of that day, when she had done all the dirty work, the Personnel Director called her in and laid her off, too.

As you might expect this experience soured me on working in the private sector.

I well remember when a manufacturing company I worked at, at my first real job, was bought out, the founder given a major block of stock in Motorola and retained as a one or two day a week “consultant,” and then, about six months later, the day I returned from my honeymoon, I and about a quarter of the workforce were “laid-off” all on the same day–willy-nilly, good workers and bad, scientists, executives, and guys who mopped the floors, and even the old, illiterate Italian worker who had been with the company since its inception as a two man outfit in a garage decades ago was fired, quite heartlessly, just a few days before he was eligible for his pension, and this was before ERISA so he got nothing for his decades of work , then my new wife–who worked at the same company–was laid off three weeks later; all this occurring at a time when the country was in the midst of an economic downturn, and there were just no jobs to be had. Luckily, as a veteran, casting about for what to do, I was eventually able to enroll in college.

There was also a lot of talk in this film about Romney’s wealth and greed, “Occupy “ types yelling “corporate greed,” pictures of his two or three several million dollar houses (in the film a worker who was fired and lost her home is mad that he has “15” houses), and how Bain would invest in a company, temporarily increase profits by cutting its workforce and increasing productivity, jack up its stock price, load it down with debt, then sell the company, or dump its stock, and make hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. It may not be pretty, but is it legally or morally wrong in a Capitalist society?
It seems to me that the essential question is not, did Romney make a lot of money, or even if Bain’s tactics were unusual or extraordinarily predatory in a Capitalist society but, rather, is Romney telling the truth that he created a net of 100,000 jobs, even though some workers were fired in the process.

Because, if that is the case, I see no problem with his actions.

You make some good points that clarify what bothers me about the argument for “creative destruction”. Finance and production/services are different sectors. It is one thing to fix up a broken company and make it viable, it is another to use a healthy company as collateral in a loan that enriches a third party. Finance and production have different goals and it has often been such. Vanderbilt beat Wall Street at its corrupt game back in the 1870’s, and the new oil/railroad/steel industries did much to advance the country. People like Carnegie were obsessed with production and making goods cheaper. But for the last fifty years it has seemed to me that too much of the financial game has been about gambling the neighbour’s house in the hope of making a winning, I don’t see that sort of game as magically leading to productive outcomes. And that is especially so when the government covers the losses.

How many jobs has Obama killed through his governance?

For example, how many jobs in the Gulf Coast were destroyed because his admin stopped issuing offshore drilling permits? How many jobs has the EPA killed, and will kill in the future? What impact does Holder’s insistence on denying states the ability to fend off illegal immigration have on the ability of Americans to get entry-level jobs? And then there’s Obamacare…

Republicans need to focus on this if they want to beat him in 2012.

“The evil inherent in Obama’s policies and in the content of his character are orders of magnitude worse than any shortcoming of Romney’s.”

It can not be stated more succinctly and powerfully than this.

ABO!!

As I have said before, laying people off in a dying company often saves the jobs of the people who didn’t get laid off. And usually the ones left are the best workers who contributed the most to the business.

And anyone who says you are in the tank for Romney hasn’t been reading your blog with comprehension.

Concerning not buying Nikes to preserve jobs for people who worked for Keds, does that mean we shouldn’t have bought automobiles to preserve the jobs of people who worked for buggy whip makers?

And I think Romney is the perfect choice for those people. Not too extreme on either side which would just guarantee more ideological agendas instead of prioritizing the welfare and safety of the U.S. and it’s citizens. Apparently his primary reputation has been the ability to progress via concensus building,- which is, and has been for some time, a huge void in DC.

And according to exit polls, the strongest motivation for NH voters was beating Obama. I can live with that!

thomass, have you ever considered that the tribulations of your company were economy-driven and not driven by who owned your company? Certainly over-leveraging has led to downfall of many companies that were bought out with bad risk management and over confidence that debt service was manageable. Not sure what type of business(es) in which your company is engaged, and whether it has a domestic or global consumer base, but economic volitility as that we have thus far experienced, and will no doubt continue to experience for some time (if not more, largely depending on Europe and how it addresses its various countries’ debt loads). There are many companies that underwent leveraged buyouts with great turnaround success, and ultimate growth even if they first had to go through paring down, selling off assets or spinning off non-essential businesses, or even bankruptcy reorganization. Change of ownership is not an inevitable determinant factor.

I work for a company bought by another group with some strong ties to Bain. We never lost money. We were sold for top dollar by our parent using a structured deal that leveraged our assets to help pay for our sale to our buyer. Econ slow down hits and we (and the buyer) go bankrupt because of the debt load the buying set up. Court discharges some debt and we return to being profitable but now stock is in the tank… so we end up being bought in a hostile takeover and are waiting for round three of lay offs.

I’m pro free market but buying up companies like ours and laying everyone off is not a service to the economy. We always had a viable product and always made money…