GOP’s Motor City fantasy: America for sale

[DonViejo]

The auctioning off of Detroit provides a terrifying glimpse of what Republicans might do to the rest of the country

THOM HARTMANN, ALTERNET

Mitt Romney should be proud of what’s happening in Detroit.

That’s because during his time at Bain Capital, he perfected the type of glorified extortion tactics Rick Snyder and Kevin Orr are using right now rob city workers of their hard-earned pension plans.

When Mitt was running Bain during the 1980s and 1990s, the company made its money by forcing companies into debt and then robbing them blind for every last bit of cash they had.

Bain would take out a loan for, say, a billion dollars. It would then use that billion dollar loan – its leverage – to buy a company. But instead of paying back that billion dollar loan itself, Bain would dump it on the company it just bought. In other words, Bain would make the company it just bought pay for its own acquisition.

And where would that company get the billion dollars to do that? Well, good old Mitt would say that it got the money by eliminating fraud and waste. But in reality that money came from stripping the company of its assets and converting them into cash.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/gops_motor_city_fantasy_america_for_sale_partner/