Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addressed the charge that he uses fuzzy math to support his claim that he created 100,000 jobs as CEO of Bain Capital by pivoting to a full throated defense of capitalism more generally. “I’ll do the math but let me tell you, I know we’re going to get attacked from left, from Barack Obama, on capitalism,” he said. “I find it kind of strange on a stage like this with republicans having to describe how private equity and venture capital work and how they’re successful and how they create jobs.”
On the actual math, here’s Romney’s answer, from a rush transcript:
“We started a number of businesses. Four in particular created 120,000 jobs. As of today. We started them years ago. They’ve grown well beyond the time I was there. To 120,000 people. That have employed by those enterprises. Some we have been with, some of which have lost jobs. People have evaluated that — well, since I ran four years ago when I ran for governor. Those that have been documented to lost jobs lost about 10,000 jobs. So 120,000 less 10,000 means we created something over 100,000 jobs.
