{"id":2509,"date":"2012-09-05T06:43:40","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T10:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=2509"},"modified":"2012-09-05T06:43:40","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T10:43:40","slug":"the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/09\/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney\/","title":{"rendered":"The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/span>itt Romney likes to say he won’t “apologize” for his success in business. But what he never says is “thank you” \u2013 to the American people \u2013 for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible.<\/p>\n

According to the candidate’s mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When\u00a0The Boston Globe<\/em>\u00a0reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a “long-shot miracle,” bragging that he had “saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company.”<\/p>\n

In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney’s initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster \u2013 leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had “no value as a going concern.” Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC \u2013 the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers \u2013 out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.<\/p>\n

With his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has made fiscal stewardship the centerpiece of his campaign. A banner at MittRomney.com declared, “We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in.” Romney also opposed the federal bailout for Detroit automakers, famously arguing that the industry should be forced into bankruptcy. Government bailouts, he insists, are “the wrong way to go.”<\/p>\n

More: Romney Is Lying. Again.<\/a><\/p>\n

But the FDIC documents on the Bain deal \u2013 which were heavily redacted by the firm prior to release \u2013 show that as a wealthy businessman, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout to serve his own interests. He had a lot at stake, both financially and politically. Had Bain & Company collapsed, insiders say, it would have dealt a grave setback to Bain Capital, where Romney went on to build a personal fortune valued at as much as $250 million. It would also have short-circuited his political career before it began, tagging Romney as a failed businessman unable to rescue his own firm.<\/p>\n

“None of us wanted to see Bain be the laughingstock of the business world,” recalls a longtime Romney lieutenant who asked not to be identified. “But Mitt’s reputation was on the line.”<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney’s Federal Bailout: The Documents<\/a><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he trouble began in 1984, when Bain & Company spun off Bain Capital to engage in leveraged buyouts and put Romney in charge of the new operation.<\/p>\n

MORE:<\/strong> \u00a0The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney | Politics News | Rolling Stone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Mitt Romney likes to say he won’t “apologize” for his success in business. But what he never says is “thank you” \u2013 to the American people \u2013 for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible. According to the candidate’s mythology, Romney took leave of his duties…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,22],"tags":[1234,1271,1431,1430,295,301],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2510,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509\/revisions\/2510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}