Mitt Romney, the front-runner Republican candidate for President, recently boasted about his record on job creation; this brought up his tenure as CEO of Bain Capital, a Private Equity firm, to the forefront of the national debate. Not only his mixed record on job creation at Bain was attacked by other Republican candidates and Democrats alike, but more importantly the nature and role of Private Equity, leverage buyouts and venture capitalism was put in question.

This is a debate that makes many Republicans uncomfortable as it reveals the destructive face of capitalism and lack of compassion and exposes several GOP pro-business policies that do not promote job creation or  middle class and workers' interests.

Private Equity firms often conduct leveraged buyouts. They target a company that may show promise or is in distress, raise private capital, secure loans using some of their own capital and the targeted company's assets as collateral, and buy the company. After acquisition, the company has significant debt thanks to these loans which necessitates restructuring or downsizing.

Streamlining the company, often requires lowering wages, reducing workers benefits, laying off workers, and closing some operations. Then they either grow it into a stronger company or liquidate it. In either case they sell it at significant profit after a relatively short time (2 to 5 years).  In liquidation the company assets are sold, including equipment, facilities and workers' pension plans, and while the workers lose their livelihood, the investors usually come out with profits many times greater than their initial investment.

This is all legal. Sometimes this process results in more profitable successful companies, while other times in bankruptcies. A key difference with venture capitalism is the time horizon, corporate raiders aim at profiting fast; timing is everything, when they come in and buy and when they come out and sell. Their sole aim is fast sizable profit, not job creation and long-term sustainability of the company.

Bain's record during Romney's tenure (1984-1999) is at best mixed. 0ne in five of the 77 businesses Bain invested went bankrupt or closed their doors. His claim of creating 100,000 jobs has not been substantiated, it may not include the jobs lost to bankrupt companies. In fact when Romney was running for Senator in Massachusetts in 1994 he claimed to have created only 10,000 jobs.

More importantly for some of the successful Bain investments like Staples, Port Authority, or Domino's most of the job growth occurred after Romney left Bain. In particular Staples (a gain of 96,000 jobs) is the brainchild of entrepreneur Tom Stemberg and Romney's role was at best tangential.

Finally, Romney's frequent use of bait-and-switch tactics was questioned: offering the highest bid to eliminate competition and then reneging on the buyout price by finding all kinds of faults with the company that were not brought up during the initial due-diligence. Romney's word was not his bond.

It is not surprising that Republican politicians and strategists are uncomfortable with the exposure of Bain and its side of venture capitalism to the broad public. Romney's and GOP's image of a country that has nothing but admiration for job-creating capitalists and nobody should mention the jobs destroyed bears little relationship with reality.

The GOP policies of slashing taxes for the rich, dismantling regulations and weakening unions have contributed to inequality and the yawning distance between the middle class and the top end. Rising inequality is class reality not class envy. These are important issues deserving to be at the center of the national debate and not to be discussed "in quiet rooms" as Romney suggested.

America is not a corporation, there is no simple bottom line. The aim of Government is  the public good, not profits. Increasing income inequality and rise in poverty are corrosive for democracy, they are not an issue of envy, but of survival of the middle class which with its consumer spending is the economic engine of the nation's prosperity.

Job creation should be put above profits. Selling overseas leads to little domestic job creation, we also need strong domestic demand. Regulating the excesses of the financial institutions and Wall St, raising additional tax revenue, while we pursue serious investments in infrastructure, research, education and health care is absolutely necessary, even if not motivated by profit. The social safety net should not be slashed to balance budgets while more tax breaks are offered to "job creators" who aim only at profits.

Engineering leveraged buyouts is not the expertise needed to fix our economic problems. The CEO of a venture capital firm often engaging in corporate raiding is not whom America needs to run our government.