General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs Mitt Romney Gordon Gekko?
Bain Capital allegedly made gains of 88 percent a year during a stretch of Mitt Romney's tenure as CEO. How did he do that? On cable TV discussions of Mittens, I've heard the name of the Oliver Stone "Wall Street" villain several times in the past few days.
Remember the "Bluestar Airlines" plot point? Charlie Sheen played ""Bud Fox", son of a Bluestar machinist, and of course Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko. This fictional deal appears to have been a classic "leveraged buy-out breakup", a big moneymaker for private capital firms in real life. Is this how Romney made his hundreds of millions?
WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?
From http://sfy.ru/?script=wall_street
"Wall Street (1987) movie script by Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone. Third draft, 4/23/87.
BUD: (standing) Bluestar Airlines. ... There was a crash last year. They just got a favorable ruling on a lawsuit. Even the plaintiffs don't know. ...the decision'll clear the way for new planes and route contracts. There's only a small float out there, so you should grab it. Good for a five point pop.
GEKKO: (to Bud) Interesting. You got a card?
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COMMERCIAL BANKER: (insistent) ...and the only way we can see this happening is liquidating the hangars and the planes. Can you people guarantee that?
Bud freezes where he sits...it all comes crashing down in a milli-second on that word 'liquidate' -- shock now spreading on Bud's face...
INVESTMENT BANKER: Guaranteed! No sweat...we already got the Bleezburg brothers lined up to build condos where the hangars are, we can lay off the planes with Mexicana, who are dumb enough to buy 'em and Texas Air is drooling at my kneecaps to get the slots and the routes. What's the problem? it's done...
ROGER: (passing a paper to the commercial banker) This is the pricetag on the 737s, the gates, the hangars, the routes, we got it all nailed right down to the typewriters...
Bud sits there numbly, a sickening feeling taking hold of him as the camera and music track and trap him tighter and tighter. The lawyers' voices distorting in the background.
INVESTMENT BANKER: ...'course the beauty of it is the overfunded pension fund. Gekko gets the 75 million in there. Fifty million buys him the minimum annuities for 6,000 employees and he walks away with the rest. All in, he'll net 60 to 70 million. Not bad for a month's work.
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,501 posts)what I'm saying.
Trillo
(9,154 posts)I think you may have nailed it. The more we learn, the more it seems so.
ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)debt leveraged buy-outs imposes on target companies.
MSNBC's 'Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell' is responding live to the CNN-sponsored GOP debate in SC, which just ended.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)laundry for the press as he was losing the SC primary to Newt today?
That doesn't seem genuine to me. And he has a cartoonish little laugh.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Who was a fictional vulture capitalist.
Mitt is a real, actual, genuine vulture capitalist.
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)highplainsdem
(49,002 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Gordon Gekko is Mitt Romney, silly.