Bosses fear Mitt Romney’s campaign will hurt them, poor dears

Romney is one of the sharks who have made conservative equity finance impossible. But Congress still taxes corporations on the dividends they pay, and allows them to write off the interest on debt. So the game will continue.

Correction: Ted Kennedy created the ads with sob stories from Massachusetts workers but never aired them. Since he was over 5 points ahead, he never used them.

But then again being badly managed is a key qualifier for it being acquired by a PE firm. What's the suprise?
Turning companies around is the definition of what they do and, like high stakes poker, that is a risky game with high potential rewards. Think they never lose? Just wait in the sidelines and you will see them lose money eventually. You may laugh at that, if you want.

Bain Capital held an information session at my university a few months ago. The reps were openly laughing about how horrible Dominos pizza was when they owned it and how much money they made off the sale. Hilarious.

In theory, private equity is a good thing. Find an underperforming company, improve it and grow it. Even if it is sold, the new buyer will supposedly continue the growth. And in theory, this benefits society because it creates job, creates wealth and thus increases tax revenues.

And in practice this usually works well. That's why Capitalism is the best model to date for our nation.

HOWEVER, we need to remember it is just a model, and it doesn't always work that way. Anytime a company is bought on leverage, the buyers are "gambling" on being able to meet their projections. If they don't, profitable companies can go bankrupt, taking many jobs with them, and giving tax breaks to those who gambled. In the long run, this will hurt our country, not help it.

Also, "Wall Street" evaluates companies purely on profit, the number of jobs they create is not even a factor. A company making $2b in profits a year that employs 10 people, is considered "better" than a company making $1.9b in profits and employing 100,000 people.

Private equity is fine in theory, but in practice I wonder if was another phony progeny of the stock market bubble that burst more than a decade ago, but whose final end has been postponed by cheap credit.

Few private equity funds hold companies and live off the dividends. Most seek to sell them back into the public markets at inflated prices. At this point who, other than public employee pension funds with taxpayers bound to make up any losses, is buying? The greatest fools of all are the only ones left.