Mitt Romney says that he opposed the government bailout of Detroit because the private market would have provided loans so GM and Chrysler could go through managed bankruptcy, but it turns out the firm Romney once led, Bain Capital, turned down the chance to do so. The government's auto task force asked Bain Capitol if it would like to invest in GM's European operations, The New York Times' Jeremy W. Peters reports, but Bain said no thanks. Detroit executives and Obama administration officials say that Romney is wrong: government money was necessary because at the worst of the financial crisis, private companies would not have lent the $80 billion the automakers needed. Based on The Times report, we now know that the government's argument was true in the case of at least one company: the one Romney helped found and shape.
