There has been much huffhuff about Romney`s money, his time at Bain capital and his taxes.
The scandalous thing is not, as John Steward pointed out, that government seems to be better at picking winners (8% vs. 22%) while investing – yes, 22% of the companys Bain invested in went bancrupt within eight years, vs. 8% of companies the White House invested in.
The scandal doesn’t lie in the fact that Bain fed itself from only a fraction of its high-risk investments, and that even 40% of those companies that led to stellar profits went bancrupt later. I can only assume that the higher rate of bancrupcies of companies that provided profits is part of the business model, i.e. they went broke precisely because they had to pay such large sums to their investors.
This seems to be the norm in this type of business environment, its just what these people do, because thats what they get paid for: Generating the highest return on investment for their investors. It is the whole branch of companies that work this way.
And of course maximising your gains while minimizing your losses naturally leads to a tax rate that would make any office worker blush. Again, a logical outcome of a system that enables the rich to evade those taxes normal mortals suffer – no acandal here, same happens in Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, amongst others.
So no, Romney just did what all venture capitalists do, because it is their job, because someone else will do it if they don’t, because money doesn’t stink, because hey, they had it coming.
And if you don’t like them, don’t vote for them.
The astonishing thing, and a disgrace to a nation that taught Germany democracy and the value of every single human being, is not the candidate with the sexapeal of a knife and the emotionality of a politburo veteran, its the sheer number of attempted or succesfull voter fraud that in sum cannot be said to be simple incompetence after 200 years of voting. In sum, they smack of a big, if uncoordindated, campaign.And even though the big media seems to pick this up slowly, nothing is going to change. Because all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
All in combination that one candidate is actually allowed to own companies that produce election machines. Machines, of course, that have been proved to be fallible and open to manipulation of all kinds of sorts. Makes it kinda easy.
I am not an American. I have been there several times, and I hope to maybe live there one day, because the US is a great country. The World, Europe, and Germany in particular owe the US so much. But since they set the standards by which we measure ourselves and others for so long, and since any change of power in the White House does have worldwide repercussions, I think I am entitled to make these remarks. Because we all profit from a democratic USA, but especially those of us who are not successful venture capitalists.