The Bain Buck Never Stops Anywhere

Romney keeps explaining and explaining, but it still makes no sense that he CEO, President, and Top Shareholder at Bane Capital from 1999-2002, and yet he had no responsibilities to the company.

Although that does sound like the stereotype of a do-nothing CEO. But he also earned a ton of money in those years (and we'd know the exact amount if he would release his tax returns, but he just won't.) What was he paid for, exactly, if not for the jobs that were listed in the SEC filings? All this semantical denial just sounds lame and etch-a-sketchy.



Wall Street Journal ~ Romney Defends Bain Tenure

On Friday, President Barack Obama in an interview with Washington, D.C.'s ABC affiliate, directly addressed the matter. "My understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital and I think most Americans figure if you are the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does," he said.

Mr. Romney said again that the buck did not stop with him at Bain Capital between 1999, when he left to head the Salt Lake City Olympics operation and 2002, when he transferred his shares in Bain to active partners.

"Actually when you leave an enterprise, when you have other people who are managing the enterprise, who take responsibility for all the investment decisions, who decide who's going to get hired and fired, who decide compensation decisions, they're the managers," he told CBS News. He also said: "The documents show that there's a difference between ownership, which is I owned shares in Bain, but I did not manage Bain."

Government officials and a Republican who ran the SEC from 2001 to 2003 said in interviews that it is not unusual for the top shareholder, or person with the "controlling" interest, to be listed on SEC documents.

Reports also emerged this week that Mr. Romney traveled back and forth from Utah to Massachusetts in 2002 to attend meetings for companies like Staples Inc., SPLS -0.24%one of Bain's investments.