Enough about Bain Capital

I'm really disappointed in my fellow Republicans harping on Romney's record at Bain Capital.  The analysis of the now infamous "77 cases", and the attack ads based on it, is badly flawed.

The WSJ reports that 17 either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested.  Many of these bankruptcies were long after Bain had left, and in several others Bain was only a minor investor.  In fact, Bain was in charge at just 5 of the bankruptcies.  A failure rate of  6.5% is well ahead of the industry average for private equity firms.  An additional 6 firms ran into so much trouble that most or all of the money Bain invested was lost.  I guess that's evidence that Bain wasn't looking to raid the companies.

But all of this analysis misses the main point -- Bain's strategy was to invest in failing companies.  The question isn't how many went bust; the question is how many would have gone bust more quickly and more completely without an injection of cash from Bain.  There's no question that Bain saved thousands of jobs.  The alternative to a slimmed down firm with fewer employees is not a bigger firm with more employees, it's a bankrupt firm with no employees. 

And of course Bain recapitalized Staples, Domino's and Sports Authority, all of which have been complete successes resulting in over 100,000 extra jobs.  Other success stories are Steel Dynamics, Experian and VisionCare.  So Gingrich, and Perry (and Obama and Axelrod) need to STFU.