Mitt Romney's Bain Capital and GST Steel

Wow wolfman, what a creative alias!

I thought I read where this was a totally false commercial. I will go back and look for the article here when I get a chance.

Here's the Rueters story!

Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q2w7iXazNso

It is never noted in the Obama ad that GST Steel had troubles long, long before Bain Capital bought the company. In fact that Bain bought them in the first place is an obvious indicator that the company was in financial trouble. After all, that is what Bain did, buy troubled companies and try to turn them around or shut them down if that proves impossible.

Along those lines, a former GST worker told the National Review, the unions were the ones bleeding GST dry, not Bain.

I nearly choked on my Cheerios when I read that GST employees were blaming Bain for their downfall. I worked at GST Steel in Kansas City for four months in 1997 immediately after leaving the Navy.

Why only four months? Quickly after I started, I surprised to learn that several of my fellow USW Local 13-represented employees, mostly millwrights and electricians, we’re making between $100-130k. This was mainly due union-mandated overtime which, at least on a few occasions, consisted of the employees bringing in sleeping bags and pillows and sleeping in the shop. It would be hard for any company to stay competitive while paying double-time union wages to get their beauty sleep, but that’s not the half of it. The union employees obviously didn’t think they had it easy enough, so they went on strike in March of ‘97. The plant shut down for a couple of weeks until it re-started under the operation of management and non-union workers. The strike lasted a couple more months. I had a family to support, so I couldn’t afford to wait. I took another (non-union) job with another company. They shuttered the plant for good a few years later.

That’s Bain’s fault? Just classic.

It should be well known by now that when a legacy manufacturer (like steel manufacturers, car companies, etc.) goes under one of the biggest reasons is because unions have for decades raped the company to death.

But there is another major problem with linking the end of GST to Mitt Romney’s work with Bain. Romney wasn’t with Bain when GST went down. Romney had left Bain Capital in 1999, two years before GST’s 2001 collapse.

But there was at least one guy linked to today’s political landscape that was still at Bain when GST went down the tubes. Obama donor and a Bain managing director Jonathan Levine was working at Bain when GST went belly up.

So, the only person that worked for Bain when GST died was an Obama bundler that raised over $100,000 for Obama.

Curiously enough, that fact wasn’t in the Obama ad video, either.

My hand needs a rest from smacking wolfman1 around. c ya

Well WSPD backs the loser Ron Paul and now they're backing Romney. Look out Mitt! Again read Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106
The Jonny-come-lately Bain short term owners saddled GST with incompetent young management while walking away with 12 mill and ruining the pensions of long term employees. The Mittster gets his dividend checks but the men who worked for thirty + loyal years get pay cuts to a promised pension. Only in America!

After all, that is what Bain did, buy troubled companies and try to turn them around or shut them down if that proves impossible.

That’s not true. Bain, bought companies in an effort to maximize profit for its owners. Whether the company could be turned around was irrelevant. If turning a company around meant profit, fine, if borrowing money that company couldn’t hope to pay back was what it took to make a profit for Bain, than that was fine too.

How Bain works: substitute Bain for Paulie and you’re all set.

Some interesting facts from the Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources. Several of Armco’s processes stopped in the 1980s due to changing economic conditions. By 1983, production was limited to semi-finished and finished steel products. The melt shops, mills, and cleaning house were shut down by 1989. In November 1993, Armco sold about 300 acres of the property to GST Technologies Inc., doing business as GST Steel Co. In 1991, several structures were demolished and Armco announced the building of a heavy industrial business complex, called the “Sheffield Industrial Park”.
GST Steel operated on their part of the property until they filed for bankruptcy in April 2001. That doesn't add up to 100 years for GST.

From Jack Cashill-As both sides will agree, this was no hit-and-run job. GS was paying dividends by 1994. That same year, management announced plans for a $98 million plant modernization.

In 1995, Bain merged GS with a South Carolina firm to form one of America’s largest mini-mill steel producers. Bain reinvested $16.5 million of its earlier dividend to pull the deal off. When a global corporate giant, the Rotterdam-based Mittal Steel, reportedly offered to buy the company out at a profit to Bain, the Bain-backed management turned the deal down. Bain was giving GS an opportunity to succeed on its own terms as an American-owned company.

In a stab at fairness, the Reuters article quotes analyst Charles Bradford on GS Industries’ failure to survive: “If you look at the steel companies that went under at the time,” said Bradford, “all of them were unionized.”

My contact, who prefers to remain anonymous for understandable reasons, was more blunt. “The true villain in this tale was the Steelworkers’ Union,” he writes. “They had crippled Armco-KC, as they had so many other once-great companies, and were hell-bent on frustrating Bain or anyone else in restoring sanity to the un-real world they had created.”

This former GS exec calls the union “corrupt.” As he tells it, union leaders were “ideologically committed to making sure that private equity could not replace the old management/ownerships that they had beaten into submission over decades.” He adds unsparingly, “They were prepared to commit suicide rather than let Bain succeed, and they achieved their goal.”

Reuters does concede that a 1997 strike at the plant “turned nasty.” The union’s peccadilloes included the shooting of bottle rockets at security guards, pounding on the windows of vehicles as they left the plant, and flattening the tires of non-union trucks.

According to my contact, Bain made its share of mistakes. Its execs thought they could reason with the unions and out-negotiate Mittal Steel. They were wrong on both counts, and they paid the price.

http://www.ingramsonline.com/Feb_2012/btl.html

Nice try Fred!
U.S. Steelmakers' Charge of Dumping Carries Weight
November 14, 1998
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/nov/14/news/mn-42634
Quote:

"The Russians are so desperate that they don't care about price," said Kenneth Hoffman, analyst for Prudential Securities. "They are just interested in getting hard currency."

"Friday's preliminary finding by the ITC could lead to a ruling as early as February on the dumping charges. That could result in retroactive duties of nearly 200% on the imported steel. Meanwhile, additional cases against steel products from other countries, most notably South Korea, are expected."

"Despite the dramatic numbers for hot-rolled steel--a tripling of tonnage from Japan, Russia and Brazil and a price plunge of nearly 20% since last winter--analysts say the claims of dumping might be difficult to prove."

"One complicating factor is the huge currency devaluations in the exporting countries. Currency values have plummeted by half or more in Asia and Russia, which makes their exports dramatically cheaper in dollars."

Paul, I am not the author of the cited article any more than you are of your cut and paste extravaganzas. I merely posted it so people would have more of a balanced look at what was happening in the steel industry in the United States at the time of the GST downfall. I think it's comical on your part to post an article with the headline "steelmakers charge of dumping carries weight" while in the body of the article, which you obviously didn't read fully, it says "analysts say the claims of dumping might be difficult to prove."
Now pick yourself up off the mat before the ten count and try again.

No offense, but can you two take the penis-waving contest back over to Swampbubbles please?

i would love to get politics off the main page

If it offends you old I apologize. I am merely responding to mistruths, half-truths, and often outright lies that are often repeated by people without all the facts. I do have a suggestion though. You can do what I do, I never read posts I may not be interested in, or follow posts written by people I don't enjoy reading. Seems to work for me.

wolfman1 since you're a new poster here you should take time to read the site's rules before posting.

I had to laugh out loud at that mikey

The reason his account was deactivated before was because he violated multiple site rules in a very short period of time after he had been warned multiple times during the previous year not to do certain things. Apparently, he thinks the rules don't apply to him.

Why is the same bilge (this thread) posted here when it already exists at SB?

Bilge? I won't respond to the comment it's self evident.

LOL, yep, insult the site owner. Then claim Fred got you banned. Makes sense to me. LOL.

I often post the same info here and there with the understanding that not everyone views both sites.

I have never looked at SB, its inferior to this site anyways.

How would you know if you never looked at it Linecrosser? LOL I do detect a flaw in your logic.