Romney in 1985 Video: Bain “Harvests” Companies For Profit

Mitt Romney’s entire campaign is based on the premise that he is better at shepherding the economy than President Obama. According to Romney, he’s a job creator, and his former company, Bain, is evidence of that. But Mother Jones has come across a tape where Mitt Romney describes his job at Bain, and it sounds a lot more like vulture capitalism than job creation:

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain’s formation, showed how he viewed the firm’s mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then “harvest them at a significant profit” within five to eight years.

Harvesting companies is a questionable practice, but it’s what private equity companies do, and everyone knows it. But harvesting companies is not synonymous with job creation. There is no way for voters to assume that because Romney knows how to suck the value out of a company and make money, that he also knows how to create jobs. He just hasn’t demonstrated that during his time at Bain, and, as he says, that wasn’t his job.

Here are Romney’s exact words:

Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit…

And that is who Mitt Romney is at heart – a man who knows how to make a lot of money for his stockholders, but what does that say about what he would do if he became your President? A lot, and not much of it good.

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