RUSH: George in Big Piney, Wyoming. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine, sir. How are you?
CALLER: Good. I’m glad you took my call here.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I am, too.
CALLER: I’m a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur. And I want to say something in defense of venture capitalists.
RUSH: Wait a minute, now. You’re former Silicon Valley entrepreneur. What did you do?
CALLER: I built two companies in the — well, the Internet’s built on the companies I built. Local area and the wide area network.
RUSH: Really? Well, that’s cool. You’re retired now?
CALLER: I’m retired now, but you can look me up in the —
RUSH: I’ll find you, George, I know how to do it.
CALLER: On the Internet.
RUSH: I think I know. I got it.
CALLER: But anyway, I’ve heard everybody bad-mouthing Romney and Bain. I borrowed money from Bain to build my first company.
RUSH: You borrowed money from Bain to build your first business?
CALLER: All I could borrow was $1.2 million, and I took it public in ’88, was named Turnaround Entrepreneur of the Year. Fifty-two million had been spent on this company, and it failed and I came in and took it over and took it in a different direction.
RUSH: Wait a minute. I want to follow this. Fifty-two million had been spent and it failed.
CALLER: And it failed.
RUSH: Bain came in and you borrowed $1.2 million.
CALLER: That’s all I could get.
RUSH: Bain put in 1.2, basically.
CALLER: Bain gave me 400.
RUSH: Bain gave you 400.
CALLER: TD gave me 400, and Kleiner Perkins gave me 400.
RUSH: Four-hundred-thousand.
CALLER: Four-hundred-thousand.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: We took it from zero to about $250 million, went public in 1988.
RUSH: How many jobs you create, George?
CALLER: At that time we had about 210 the day we went public. Obviously we got acquired so it continued to grow. The second one, the second company I built, I also built with venture capital. And we got nearly a billion dollars for that company. I took it public in 1993, I think. Anyway, that was the local interconnect for the Internet on a local basis.
RUSH: Well, whatever.
CALLER: The venture guys jumped right in there and, you know, they lose a lot of money. The first company lost $25 million before they gave up and I was able to talk ’em into lending me some more money.
RUSH: So how does all this talk about Bain make you feel?
CALLER: Well, I wished I had a 78% hitting average. I mean it’s fabulously successful. I mean they created millions of jobs, because it cascades. You have a first layer of jobs and then they lay off that work on others and others and others. Obama has no concept whatsoever what he’s even talking about.
RUSH: Well, I know, that’s what Romney says, too. Romney says Obama just really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
CALLER: He’s a rank amateur.
CALLER: Well, that’s possible. Rush, I could sit here and do the numbers, and I can tell you, for every day you go down, it takes you two days to come back, financially.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And we’re gonna have a depression whether we like it or not, I don’t care who’s president. You can’t get there from here the way we spend. We’re supporting the world.
RUSH: Well, we have been, I know. So you see no way of avoiding a depression?
CALLER: I don’t. The numbers aren’t there. People are out of work who are not paying taxes. The GDP has gone to hell.
RUSH: I know. Eighty-eight million American adults are not working, but they’re eating, George.
CALLER: Yeah, food stamps.
RUSH: Well, that and other things, too.
CALLER: I defy anybody that has any economic sense whatsoever to point to me how we’re gonna get out of this hole.
RUSH: They’re not. George, everybody’s trying to kick this down the road. Everybody is trying to kick this down the road so that when it blows up, they’re dead or otherwise not around.