Romney in '85: Bain Will 'Harvest' Companies

Mother Jones is out with another Mitt Romney video, this one from all the way back in 1985, when he was explaining what the new Bain Capital was all about. The choice quote:

• "Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and, hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit."

• David Corn, Mother Jones: The clip shows a young Romney who "saw businesses as targets of opportunity that could be harvested for the benefit of his investors, not as long-term job creators or participants in a larger community. His remarks were hardly surprising, but they did encapsulate the mindset of get-in/get-out private equity deal makers."
• Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast: "This is not the '47 percent' bombshell. It just shows what Bain Capital was about: rewarding its shareholders by 'harvesting' companies. That word is clinical." Bain isn't evil; this is just how finance works, but "those who lost their jobs as a result will not be thrilled to find out that they were harvested for Romney's mega-rich Bain peeps."
• See coverage of the "47%" remarks here, as well as a clip of Obama talking about "redistribution" here.

(More Mitt Romney 2012 stories.)