Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency is built on the idea that his success in the leveraged buyout industry and the fabulous wealth he’s accumulated is evidence that he knows how to create jobs and foster economic growth. He argued in Tuesday night’s debate that we should just trust him when he says he can cut the deficit and cut taxes by 20% across the board because of his credentials as a leveraged buyout titan.

The problem with Romney’s argument is that the leveraged buyout business does not create jobs. The tax breaks that the industry relies on, like the discounted tax rate for capital gains and offshore tax shelters, add tens of billions of dollars each year to the deficit.

Today, The Nation is reporting on yet another example of how Romney and the shadowy private investment industry really makes its money—offshoring jobs, receiving taxpayer subsidies and bailouts and cutting workers’ pensions.

According to The Nation's "Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza," the Romneys made more than $15 million from the auto industry bailout through an investment in Elliott Management of at least $1 million. Elliott Management is a hedge fund founded by the GOP’s largest Wall Street donor, Paul Singer.

The money the Romneys made off the auto industry bailout came from a large stake in auto parts manufacturer, Delphi, which Elliott Management bought at rock-bottom prices during the financial crisis. When Elliott Management began to sell its stake in Delphi after the financial crisis abated, it had generated a profit of more than 3,000%.

The Nation reports:

Yet without taking billions in taxpayer bailout funds—and slashing worker pensions—the hedge funds’ investment in Delphi would not have been worth a single dollar, according to calculations by GM and the U.S. Treasury.

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from U.S. taxpayers….

Romney has slammed the bailout as a payoff to the autoworkers union. But that certainly wasn’t true for the bailout of Delphi. Once the hedge funders, including Singer—a deep-pocketed right-wing donor and activist who serves as chair of the conservative, anti-union Manhattan Institute—took control of the firm, they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers.

Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).”

So, that’s the recipe for success among Romney and his friends—transferring wealth from workers to the top 1%, taxpayer bailouts, slashing workers’ pensions and offshoring jobs. Unfortunately, this recipe undermines our success as a nation. 

Read The Nation's "Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza."