1.  He was, simultaneously, CEO, Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Owner of Bain.
   
2.  I don't think he had any other directors' opinions to consider.
   

3.  In that kind of a setup, Mittens had absolute power and absolute control over everything Bain did and did not do.  That would extend to hiring, firing, which deals to do and which to pass on.
   
4.  I think it's likely he devolved some control to minions, but that control came with the proviso:  "make money or be gone."  
   
5.  The SEC filings were in connection with Bain buying a piece or more of publicly traded companies.  Buying companies, looting them, then tossing the carcass was Bain's business.  You have to buy a big enough chunk of the company to get things like seats on the company's board of directors, where you get a good look at the company's books.  If a company's stock is publicly traded, i.e., listed on a stock exchange, and you buy enough of the company's stock (IIRC 5% or more) the SEC is involved, SEC filings are required and SEC regulations must be followed.  Not the least of these requirements is that the filings be made ... under oath and penalty of perjury.  (In other words, "no lying allowed".)
   
6.  Mittens' is saying he kinda lied on the SEC forms, that yeah, he had the title but he really wasn't it.
   
7.  Mittens knows the statute of limitations has run out on any direct prosecution for lying on the SEC forms.  So, he figures he can be as arrogant as he wants on this.

So, depending on whether you are in the mood to look at the actual issues here, you may or may not care enough to respond to what follows.

Mitt Romney has been relentlessly emphasizing his stellar business experience as a reason why he, and not Obama, would be better able to lead the country out of its economic doldrums.  His main claims to success on that score are his years at Bain Capital and his leadership of the Salt Lake City Olympics.  The nexus of these two elements of Romney's career are the years from 1999 to 2002.  Coincidentally, that was also the time when Bain was shipping jobs overseas.

What we are getting from the Romney campaign is that while his name was all over SEC filings related to Bain, he wasn't really operationally involved, wasn't making decisions, so that what was happening at Bain during that time can't - or shouldn't - be something he has to be accountable for.

Do you know the reasons why SEC filings require the disclosures of - among other things - officers and directors?  Well, in part, because investors rely on this and other information contained in these filings, and it's why misrepresentation of that information is considered to be a no-no.  There are allegedly criminal consequences to doing this kind of thing, but we do have to remember that this is the SEC we're talking about, and they seem to have an aversion to attaching "criminal" to any company or individual even in cases where it is blatantly obvious.

So, Factcheck.org which you cited, described Romney as a "passive, absentee owner."  Wonder if Romney will be touting that as a reason why he should be elected?

What strikes me is that the kinds of things that are being said by so-called experts, some on the record and some not, that are downplaying the SEC filings, are eerily reminiscent of the things that were being said when it came to light that banks and lenders and servicers were robo-signing documents - that somehow it didn't really matter, followed by a laundry list of why we shouldn't consider this any kind of fraud - it was "harmless."  

If Romney's such a great businessman, he should not be weaseling out of what Bain did when he was or wasn't actively involved - and because this is how he's choosing to handle the issue, I have no reason to think that he will be any different if faced with having to defend or account for things that will happen if he is president.  Is he going to say, "oh, no - that wasn't my decision, that was the Attorney General, or the Treasury Secretary - I really had nothing to do with that?"

I understand that there is a real dearth of accountability by people who hold elective office, and the fact that Obama may not be doing well on that score doesn't mean, and shouldn't mean that Mitt Romney, who claims to have the chops to do it all better, shouldn't also have to come to grips with whether he understands the meaning of "the buck stops here."

Romney simply LIES A LOT, WAY MORE than Obama: 3 times more than the President.
If we take the findings of Politifact, and apply a weighted average score on them we see that Obama scores more than 3 times higher than Romney.

Obama's truth score (362) is 8 and a half times higher than Romney's truth score (42), but weighted for number of checked statements, 379 vs 139, it's to see that Obama's weighted truth score (362/379 = 96%) is 3 tiems that of Romney (42/139 = 32%).

http://www.facebook.com/pages/LIES-Mitt-Romney-told-me/269924963074043

Politifact, the fact-checking site, categorizes what politicians say in six categories:
True 3
Mostly True 2.
Half True 1.
Mostly False -1.
False -2
Pants on Fire -3.
which we can give points to, like above. This means that if a politician lies as much as he's truthful, he's be scoring a zero, which is fair.

As of the 5th of July this stat reads:
Obama had:
88 True statements which gives 264 points.
88 Mostly True statements which gives 176 points.
96 Half True statements which gives 96 points.
45 Mostly False statements which gives -45 points.
57 False statements which gives -114 points.
5 Pants on Fire statements which gives -15 points.
Total points: 362.

Were these documents and used by anyone or an institution to garner funds/credit with the assumption that someone was running the show when in fact they weren't (or weren't, still unclear) ?  That's fraud, probably not major enough to warrant charges, but in the real world, privately held firms file with SEC for one purpose, money.  Either investment or to secure credit.

If he was misrepresenting himself and his relationship with Bain, isn't that something he needs to explain, and isn't that something that could have some bearing on how fast and loose he would play things with the country?

In my opinion, the Olympics are the distraction; that Romney turned it around is nice, but it has nothing to do with running the country.  

Nothing.

In 2002, Romney got away without showing his tax-returns for proof of residency in the governor's race. He figures that he can get away with it again. He has not been transparent with the electorate for years, and has played by a different set of rules. Romney refused to release his 2001 MA tax return, unlike every other candidate in the race. It was assumed that he did not want to reveal financial issues; but his residency was the disputed issue. The tax return required him to select between Resident, Non-Resident, or Part-Year Resident. The question raised was that if he released his tax return, it might show that he was not a resident of the state. Adding further fuel to the secrecy was Romney refusal to release a redacted copy of the tax-return to the Boston Globe showing only the residency question.

Also on this question of residency, the LA Times reported:
"Romney maintains that he has always considered Massachusetts his home, and that a simple clerical error misclassified his Utah residence. He said he failed to notice the mistake because, for two years, the bills went to his wife."  http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/13/nation/na-romney13

Link

So, if he's still at Bain in the sense most people understand that to mean, does he or doesn't he make the off-shoring decisions?  What's he doing differently in those years than he had done before, or was done while he claims not to have been active in the company?

The good news for Romney if he had stayed at Bain would be that he wouldn't have provided false information on SEC and - more importantly, maybe - FEC forms.

David Dayen:

As former Bain Capital partner Ed Conard said yesterday, everything Bain was doing from 1999-2002 reflects everything they were doing before 1999 - gaming the tax system to make massive profits and push the losses onto the public sector.

The reason this matters to me is that Romney signed an FEC document just last year stating that he "has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way," and yet the documents revealed since show that to be a falsehood. Everyone is focused on SEC documents - with horrible people like Bob Woodward saying that "they are camouflages for what's really going on," which is nice for us little people to know - but that's completely beside the point. It's the FEC document that's the problem.

From HuffPo:

A corporate document filed with the state of Massachusetts in December 2002 -- a month after Romney was elected governor -- lists him as one of two managing members of Bain Capital Investors, LLC "authorized to execute, acknowledge, deliver and record any recordable instrument purporting to affect an interest in real property, whether to be recorded with a Registry of Deeds or with a District Office of the Land Court."

In August 2011, Romney told federal authorities, as part of the financial disclosure process, that he "retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee [for the 2002 Winter Olympics]. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way."

Bain Capital Investors is a Bain Capital entity.