Junior was up for the weekend with his lovely girlfriend Yvonne. Junior has a habit of "borrowing" whatever he sees around here that he takes a fancy to. Guitars, amplifiers, books, shoes - nothing is safe.
And God knows I always have to go the extra mile to hide my stash.
Anyway, we're rummaging through all those boxes in the garage that haven't been opened in the last two or three moves, because he wants to "borrow" my ancient Seiko watch, the one with the silver band and the blue face.
Junior has become something of a watch fancier. We never found the watch, but he did find my Vol. 1 of Marx's "Capital". That's a book I haven't opened for years and years. Not because I think Marx has lost his relevance; in fact, I think he is more relevant than ever in these twilight years of capitalism.
So before I let Junior drive away with it, I had a quick leaf through, and that's when I found a yellowed press clipping from April of 1984. "Hamilton Company moves production to Mexico," about how Allen Automotive Products was moving from Southern Ontario to Chihuahua Mexico, and how jobs that paid $13 an hour would now be done for 57 cents an hour. Plus benefits of course.
How everything old is as fresh as tomorrow! At this moment Mitt Romney's company Bain is carting a profitable Illinois company off to China. The Chinese don't work for 57 cents an hour the way the Mexicans used to, but they're still way cheaper than American workers.
That old news story mentioned that Allen had been bought out by Dayco back in '68, and it was the US based Dayco that was making the move. Dayco had a vast stable of real companies that made real products that real people needed, and was eventually bought out by Mark IV Industries.
Mark IV Industries was taken over by a British hedge fund in 2000, which fobbed it off on an American hedge fund, Sun Capital Partners, in 2008. Apparently the Brits lost money on the deal.
Sun paid 70 million for the company and pushed it into bankruptcy a year later. Bankruptcy is a good place to shake off pesky union contracts and pension obligations. As of last year Sun Capital Partners were shopping Mark IV around, looking for a price in the half billion dollar range.
And here's where we meet Mitt again. When Marc Leder started Sun Capital, some of his start-up capital came from none other than Mitt Romney! Mr. Leder has returned the favor; he remains a stalwart underwriter of Mitt's political ambitions.
One of the ironies is that if I hadn't wasted my time reading Marx and smoking weed, I could have started my own hedge fund! Instead, now Junior is reading Marx and smoking weed...
And the hedge fund modus operandi has not changed one iota. Buy a viable business, load it up with debt incurred to pay yourself management fees and special dividends, push it into bankruptcy, screw all the other stakeholders; shareholders, employees, franchisees; float an IPO for the resurrected entity, and walk away patting yourself on the back for your brilliant business acumen.
If all goes to plan you've contributed absolutely nothing positive to the economy, but you've padded your pocketbook to the tune of millions and millions.
When Mitt says he has "business experience," that's what he's talking about.
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