by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash
Leveraged buyout means you put a company in debt, and use the money you extract from it to partly buy the company. You also use this debt to pay yourself huge fees and get tax benefits. Basically you're looting the company, which is why many leveraged buyouts end in bankruptcies. The excuse these guys use for what they do is that they bring “efficiency” — one of those meaningless hide-my-hypocrisy phrases like “free market” and “collateral damage.”
So Mitt Romney is a dyed-in-the-wool Wall Streeter, engaged in one of its most egregious practices. He also has money stashed away in the Cayman Islands, may still have a Swiss bank account, has helped export jobs overseas, and is building an elevator for his cars. His wife drives a couple of Cadillacs, and he pays 15% in taxes.
He is what one may safely call a caricature of a Wall Street fraudster. The perfect plutocrat. So obviously slumming among us hoi polloi that he comes off as awkward. And he also happens to be a serious serial liar.
Yet 45% of Americans want him to be our next President. He bought himself his nomination, burying his rivals in negative ads, outspending them by a factor of 10 or more. And Americans are OK with that. They'd rather have a rich Wall Street guy run our country than anyone else.
Are we totally crazy? Didn't Wall Street just screw us? Didn't their gambling with our homes cost over a 100 million jobs around the world? Didn't their shenanigans screw up the retirement of millions? Didn't they cause the Great Recession?
And has any of them been prosecuted?
Hurrah for America! Let our next president be a Wall Street shyster!
Talk about Stockholm Syndrome. It's like we want our rapist to be our therapist. We're really happy to ensure that our democracy remains a plutocracy. Bring on tax cuts for the wealthy. It's perfectly OK that all the productivity gains of our workers should go to management (if our productivity gains were reflected in our earnings, the median income of American households would be $92,000 a year instead of just under $50,000 a year — that's $42,000 a year that the rich are stealing from us).
Americans, the eternal victims. Bring the noose here, darling, and put it around my neck. Let me hang myself with my vote for Romney.
What can one say? The mind boggles. Are the white people of America really this stupid?
(Afternote: I have a book out, self-published at the moment, based on my many provocative posts to 3QD. It's called The Real Obama: Progressive Tiger or Wall Street Poodle? You'll never have more fun reading about politics. Only $12 — order a copy here: lulu.com/product/paperback/the-real-obama-progressive-tiger-or-wall-street-poodle/18939747)