Posted by smorgante on 12/21/2011

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Mitt Romney, we all know, is one of the founders of private equity firm Bain Capital. Romney likes to tout this experience and to paint himself as a private sector job creator who can help get the economy moving again. The Associated Press recently did some in-depth research into the financial and regulatory filing from Bain, and their conclusions show an ominous future for American manufacturing under a Romney administration. 

Some of the findings:

Holson Burnes [a Bain-owned company] closed the plant and sold the property [in South Carolina] in July 1992 for $2.8 million, county records show. The company paid off its mortgage and transferred a small number of remaining jobs to New Hampshire.
…
The cost-cutting worked, just as the company prepared its initial public offering. By 1993, Holson Burnes brought in more than $3 million in after-tax profit, a stark turnaround from its $12.4 million loss the year before.
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The cost-cutting continued at Holson Burnes. By 1992, the company manufactured nearly 75 percent of its photo frames overseas, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of the company’s clock-making divisions also shipped work overseas from a Rhode Island plant.

Under Romney, Bain was certainly able to turn around struggling companies and make them profitable. Of course, it’s easy to become profitable when you send the jobs overseas to workers that make thousands of times less than American ones.

Read the full article here.