WHAT did Romney know about federal program that insured pension funds and WHEN did he know it?

[blm]

Last edited Mon Jul 16, 2012, 02:50 PM - Edit history (1)

The corpmedia and many in the left media are missing one of the major points of the story - INSURANCE FRAUD.

When Romney underfunded GS Industries pension fund by $44 million and taxpayers ended up being billed for it through the federal program that insured these pension funds, he likely knew he could plunder the assets that should have been used for pensions and no one would dare call him out for insurance fraud.

So...we need to keep pressuring for this answer.

WHAT did Mitt Romney know about the federal program that insured pension funds of bankrupted companies and WHEN did he know it?

No doubt in my mind that Romney and others have committed INSURANCE FRAUD..... paid for by American workers' taxes.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-15/romney-s-bain-yielded-private-gains-socialized-losses.html

-----
There are many other examples of this debt-fueled strategy. In the two years following the acquisition in 1993 of GS Industries, a steel mill, for $8 million, Bain Capital increased the company’s debt to $378 million on operating income of less than a 10th of that amount. Some of this was used to pay Bain Capital a $36 million dividend in 1994. That degree of leverage was excessive in light of the cyclicality and capital-intensive nature of the steel industry.

By the time the company went bankrupt in 2001, it owed $554 million in debt against assets valued at $395 million. Many creditors lost money, and 750 workers lost their jobs. The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures company retirement plans, determined in 2002 that GS had underfunded its pension by $44 million and had to step in to cover the shortfall.
-----

It's the INSURANCE FRAUD, stupid!

[pnwmom]

1. Thanks. K & R. n/t

[Kalidurga]

2. Now you just have to figure out how to put that info on a bumper sticker

because that is the attention span of the people that support Romney.

[spooky3]

3. I think someone could make a great 30 second video that independents would "get."

The Romney supporters are a lost cause.

[blm]

5. Look into all the other companies where he pulled this act, too.

I highly doubt he only did this one time.

[blm]

6. Someone can do a graphic that can be spread.

EarlG?

[JHB]

15. Romney Shorted Employee Pensions and all I got...

...was this lousy bill for it. (Uncle Sam)

[blm]

24. Dine-n-Dash Republicans have taxpayers picking up the bills while they ship the looted cash overseas

It's the Republican Way

[Kalidurga]

28. oh wow that's a good one nt

[Jackpine Radical]

26. Dn't even bother trying to get anything into the heads

of Romneyzombies.

I think a lot of independents would find the story interesting if presented in the right way, though.

[blm]

27. EXACTLY - this is insurance fraud plain and simple - with US taxpayers dollar.

.

[Lugnut]

4. K&R n/t

[NNN0LHI]

7. Yes, but do you know what the statute of limitations are for insurance fraud?

There is no statute of limitations for insurance fraud.

Nice to know isn't it?

Don

[blm]

9. Good to know. ; )

.

[blm]

10. Don, can you make an OP about that and refer back to this thread? We need to spread this fast.

And push MSM into recognizing that Romney's problems here are REALLY BIG. No doubt many companies like his were pulling this exact same fraud and now need to pay back the taxpayers BIGTIME!!! That should deal with a big chunk of the deficit. ; )

[elleng]

17. This approach should be a BIG part of Dem's anti-rmoney approach.

I think one of his techniques for 'success,' for bain and olympics, was/is/has been to take advantage of government benefits/handouts as often as possible. Would be very interesting if Dems could come up with a number, as in 'How much have rmoney's manipulations cost the taxpayer?'

[AzDar]

8. K & R

[GeorgeGist]

11. Oh goody, FREE STUFF.

[blm]

29. They get access to free money, taxpayer ends up stuck with the tab for THEIR extravagant lifestyles

.

[Xyzse]

12. Thank you

I am still trying to read through it and understand it.

So basically, what he did was to/Bain would:

Buy a company
Saddle it with debt, pocketing the money for acquisition(For Bain, not the company)
Bankrupt it while!
Claiming capital gains by leveraging/betting against the company.
Reap the insurance money from bankruptcy protection
...

Did I get that right?

[blm]

13. Don't know if HE pocketed any insurance money, but federal insurance money (OUR tax dollars) went

to those pensioners whose pension funds were looted by Romney before the bankruptcy. Did Romney KNOW the fed govt would cover the pensions fund through this insurance program? No doubt he knew this. How could he not?

[Xyzse]

14. My apologies

I was over-simplifying.
I was trying to put it in to bullet points.

So much so that I didn't add the repercussions.

Mainly:
Loss of American jobs
Another bankrupted American Company - Jobs goes overseas.
Creditors get cheated out of money.
People get cheated out of their retirement.

[Xyzse]

22. Although

Did I get it right?

[philly_bob]

16. I remember Wall Street documents from that time talking about "overfunded pension plans"

Companies plundered the pension plans, then off-loaded the pension obligations to insurance companies.

This was "value creation."

[blm]

18. That turned out to be insurance fraud....time for payback. Pay back the taxpayers stuck with the tab

Dine and Dash Republicans.

[blm]

19. philly...great article from 2005 lays it all out

http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2005/10/the-death-of-pensions.html

[philly_bob]

31. Interesting.... Use of "discount rate" to rip off pensioners

Thanks, blm. Learned something from your link.

"When accounting for a pension, a company selects a discount rate to price future liabilities. But companies are selecting higher and higher discount rate so they can set aside less and less money. You can completely alter your profit or loss simply by selecting a new number, and it’s all perfectly legal."

If I read the chart in the article below right, it works like this. Suppose a manufacturing company has to pay a hypothetical pension of $1,000/year. At a discount rate of 3%, the company would price that obligation at $33,000. At a discount rate of 20%, that obligation would be priced at $5,000. Since the pension payments are guaranteed by the government, what discount rate will the the manufacturing company choose?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/462411-discounted-cash-flow-what-discount-rate-to-use. Chart I use is under subheading "How much would you pay.

[Hubert Flottz]

20. Republicans lie to themselves and to others, so often that they...

forget all about it being a crime to lie to the SEC, or the IRS, or even congress. A crime for you, or me, or Mitt, to lie to a cop, a judge, or a jury.

Mitt lied to the government about Bain...what else has he lied about? We know now, that he can't be trusted to tell the truth, even when it really matters. Why would a man spend so much of his own money to try and become president of the United States of America. Is it purely his ego, or is he once again, motivated by greed?

[riverbendviewgal]

21. taxpayers

got screwed

[Octafish]

23. ''Right here in South Carolina...

"...there is a company called GSI, made steel. Mitt Romney and Bain bought that company, they liquidated it, eliminated the jobs. There was a pension in that company and that pension got shorted, and the federal government had to bail out the pension so taxpayer money made up the difference in the pension and Bain Capital made a profit of tens of millions of dollars in that deal," Rick Tyler said on MSNBC. Tyler is the head of Gingrich's Super PAC."

http://mto.mediatakeout.com/external/53574



Hoo boy! This is going to be neet!

[blm]

25. We need to get this bigger story out in front.

Think of how much money this creep and all the other pension looters cost taxpayers through this insurance scam. Would LOVE to see the stats on payouts from that federal program.

[valerief]

30. All fraud is paid for by taxpayers. nt