Quote:
Originally Posted by MadeInAmerica
Besides saying that Mitt Romney supports a free market, can you prove how this isn't just words?
The text book definition of a free market, is a market with no government regulation. Otherwise, it's a controlled market, which with how Mitt has supported issues and legislation in the past, makes it a black and white, clear as day fact, that he doesn't support a free market, but a controlled market.
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5 of Mitt Romney's Best Bain Capital Buys
Staples
As mentioned earlier, Romney and Bain invested in Staples in Bain's heady early days when venture capital was its weapon of choice and leveraged acquisitions weren't anybody's idea of a good time. It didn't make that investment any less wise or the moves that followed any less indicative of Staples' influence on future endeavors.
Bain and Romney saw a $13 million return on their $2 million investment and last year saw Staples bring in $24.5 billion in sales and employ roughly 90,000 people worldwide.
The Sports Authority
When one good idea pays off, why not do it again? Just as there was little call for a local stationery store the size of a hangar when Staples opened in 1986, sports stores weren't much beyond mom-and-pop stores and regional mall- and strip-mall-based chains in 1987, when former Herman's World of Sporting Goods CEO Jack Smith pitched Romney, Bain and several other backers on the idea of a sporting-goods mega store roughly the size of a small arena.
Though Sports Authority would eventually grow to more than 460 stores in 45 states and a number of licensed stores in Japan, the investment would never work out for Kmart, which sold off Sports Authority in 1994 after closing several of its own stores. Within eight years, Kmart would be bankrupt and Sports Authority would be thriving.
Brookstone
The Sharper Image went from a gadget store to a logo on iPod docks, shavers and luggage found at Macy's(M_), JCPenney(JCP_) and Bed, Bath & Beyond(BBBY_). Brookstone morphed from a gadget store competing with the Sharper Image to one competing with high-end Hammacher Schlemmer and its $13,000 motorized monocycle. Guess who did something right?
When Romney and Bain took over Brookstone in 1991, it wasn't to change the products but to change the model for selling them. Today, Brookstone still has 300 stores but relies on that same multipronged approach of Web and catalog service to not only stay afloat but to boost sales 8.8% and push same-store sales 6.7% last year. Those tweaks made during the Bain years didn't always hold, as Brookstone saw big declines in 2009, but they set a template for how the company could survive a changing climate, streamline and remain relevant -- if only somewhat less indebted. Doing the same to certain elements of the federal government, if not the whole thing, seems like a prerequisite for any serious GOP candidate.
Sealy(ZZ_)
Sometimes you just want a nice, stable place to rest your head at night. For many years, regardless of its mattress quality, Sealy was not that place.
The 130-year-old company fought off bankruptcy during the Great Depression, went through its first leveraged buyout in 1989 and eventually was bought out by Romney, Bain and Sealy's executive team in 1997.
The company redesigned its core mattress, focused on the high end and watched earnings jump to $168 million from $112 million in three years.
Bain made back more than five times its initial $830 million investment when it sold Sealy to KKR in 2004, but Sealy went into its 2006 IPO as a company ahead of its time. When the recession hit in 2009, Sealy's "lean" approach kept it from having a ton of increasingly worthless inventory laying around and protected it from the losses beseting competitors such as Simmons, which found itself leveraged to the hilt and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2009. Instead of laying off its nearly 5,000 full-time workers at 25 bedding plants, Sealy was able to get by through attrition and the trimming of its temporary work force.
Dominos Pizza(DPZ_)
Domino's had only one owner before Romney and Bain bought 93% of the company in 1998, and Tom Monaghan knew how to play to a conservative base. Installing David Brandon as chain CEO wasn't a shabby move either, as Brandon oversaw the Domino's IPO in 2004, tweaked the company's ordering system with online ordering and a "pizza tracker" and set into motion the 2009 pizza revamp that helped boost revenues 11.9%, to $1.6 billion.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11138...ital-buys.html
That is a whole lot of success and a whole lot of jobs created and it is only the top 5, there are hundreds more success stories Mitt Romney had while at Bain Capital.
This is someone who knows how to make things successful. All of these companies were failing or having little success when he bought them. He has the experience to turn this struggling economy around.
If a person only helped create one of these companies in their career they would be considered a success. No person who knows anything about the business world wants to argue his success in it.
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