More on some of Romney’s financial holdings, with some context:
For nearly 15 years, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s financial portfolio has included an offshore company that remained invisible to voters as his political star rose.
Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney’s state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning — suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign.
The omissions were permitted by state and federal authorities overseeing Romney’s ethics filings, and he has never been cited for failing to disclose information about his money. But Romney’s limited disclosures deprive the public of an accurate depiction of his wealth and a clear understanding of how his assets are handled and taxed, according to experts in private equity, tax and campaign finance law.
When the Obama campaign starts running ads about this, Halperin will whine it’s class warfare and Glenn Kessler will give it Four Pinocchios. But how many divisions do they have?
Xenos
Romney is probably hiding the money to keep it away from his church, not the IRS. Must really suck to have them take a 10% cut of everything.
BGinCHI
Love the Steely Dan reference.
It would be nice if the soft underbelly of the “job creators” and overall benign Rich Overlords idea got exposed in all of this. It might cause a greater desire to do some, what’s it called…regulation?
The question of how these kinds of investment companies benefit anyone but a few individuals needs to get asked far and wide.
SteveinSC
Nothing says “patriotic” like hiding your money overseas, especially on the 4th. Moreover, Halperin is a smug asshole, who can be counted on to put just that soupcon of “diss the democrats” on everything he comments on.
dr. bloor
Kessler’s going to look pretty stupid hanging four Pinocchios on an ad that prominently features the headline of a WaPo story.
CardinalRed
My guess is he is hiding a tax rebate….
BGinCHI
@dr. bloor:
Feature.
amk
nice ass covering by wapo.
Citizen_X
Politifact has made their decision; now let them enforce it.
Linda Featheringill
@Citizen_X:
[Hee-hee] The spirit of Andrew Jackson lives on.
rikyrah
oh, the guys at the Prudential Building in Chicago are stock piling the ads as we type
MattF
Well, Romney lied. So, since he does that all the time, it’s okey-dokey.
Phil Perspective
@Xenos: Do you really think that? He’s a freakin’ bishop in the Mormon Church. He’s not lying to about his fortune to his church. He’s lying to not pay taxes. That’s what all these RWNJ’s hate the most. Paying taxes to pay for services for “the undeserving.”
ThresherK
Let’s not be so rough on Mitt.
He’s another in a line of GOP nominees who owns so many kitchens it can truly be said he doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from.
James Gary
“Can you hear me, Dr. Wu? Are you really just a shadow/Of the man that I once knew…?”
Villago Delenda Est
@Phil Perspective:
Well, Rmoney doesn’t mind the tithing so much because that’s benefits himself and his kind, the parasite leadership of the vile cult that he’s a member of.
He helps control where that money goes.
Not so with tax dollars. Why, undeserving gentiles (non-Mormons) (but I’m being redundant there) might get some benefit from government expenditures. Particularly those still in doctrine not quite equal melanin enhanced types.
Mino
@BGinCHI: Last night on a financial channel they were discussing Barclay’s. The Brit said the English never saw the need to regulate–they trusted their elites to do the right thing. Well, their elites do at least show some sense of shame–two resigned. Better than our record for that.
Cacti
FactCheck will say it’s “all wet”.
Politifact will say it’s “pants on fire”.
Because both sides do it, and shut up, that’s why!
MattF
@Mino: Actually, not so much with that sense of shame stuff. I’m on my iPhone, so no linkee, but see Felix Salmon’s postings on the subject.
Corner Stone
@Mino:
I wouldn’t start giving Bob Diamond the benefit on that any time soon. He’s already started playing dirty by releasing some internal emails that purport to summarize some under the table agreements Barclay’s had with the government.
Plus, Diamond is getting 30M pounds to walk away. Not something I’d be hanging my head about if I could pull it off.
Corner Stone
Oh, and a little something from Taibbi regarding GS:
“”Fuck the compliance area – procedures, schmecedures,” chirps Peter Melz, former president of Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. (a.k.a. Merrill Pro), when a subordinate worries about the company failing to comply with the rules governing short sales.”
Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’
Keith
We’re in such a weird time on how our presidential candidates act. It used to be a given that while they could obscure the truth with doublespeak, they still had to be fundamentally honest and *very* forthcoming about their private lives (particularly their financial dealings). Now we have a guy who spouts blatant falsehoods without even bothering to add in nuance, and literally has offshore tax shelters while refusing to release various business dealings…and he just says “that’s none of your business; I am not releasing this info”. How long before we have a sitting president get impeached for a *real* high crime/misdemeanor (or even a felony)?
Incredible how the GOP is OK with just absolutely trashing the ideals of the highest office in the land in the long-term just for the sake of winning elections in the short-term.
Corner Stone
Goodness, but is there any market anywhere where these fucking banksters haven’t been stealing from us?
“The US electricity regulator has subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase twice in the past three months as it investigates whether the bank manipulated power markets in California and the Midwest region, court filings show.
The filings mark the first time the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has revealed its formal probe into JPMorgan bidding practices, which it says may have inflated electricity costs by at least $73 million.”
JPMorgan at Center of Power Market Probe
MikeJ
In case people didn’t recognize it, some here pointed out yesterday, I think, that Sankaty was a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard.
A fund named for a way to get offshore.
Yutsano
@Keith: Just win, baby. They honestly don’t care as long as he is of the right tribe.
Mino
@MattF: @Corner Stone: Yes, well, what do you think it would take to shame one of ours? I got nothin.
Valdivia
and they must and will stand steadfast in hitting this I am sure. This will be just the beginning. Because there will be more and more stories about the guys who rape every country from the financial sector.
burnspbesq
OK, Sankaty’s a “controlled foreign corporation,” and the Romneys own more than 25 percent of its stock, so there should have been a Form 5471 with lots of detail about its activities attached to every one of the Romneys’ Forms 1040.
C’mon, Mitt, let’s see the 5471s. I’ll bet they tell an interesting story.
Mino
@Corner Stone: At least it isn’t Texas doing it this time. And honestly, 73 mil seems paltry for those boys.
burnspbesq
I imagine Mitt would be halfway crucified if we got to see the Sankaty 5471s.
amk
Happy, happy, happy independence day, ‘murka.
Keith
@Yutsano: Oh, yeah, I am very sure that the thought process goes that *anything* is better than Democrats running the show, so they should have no limits to what they would do. When you have talk radio show hosts constantly telling their audiences (including politicians) that Obama is destroying the country, they start to internalize it and think that whatever they do to win is OK. Thanks, Nixon! Thanks, Atwater! Thanks, Rove!
Mino
@MikeJ: Mitt’s wit.
Z
There’s one important aspect of this that I don’t think anyone has reported on yet. Romney has a ton of accumulated wealth in shell corporations located in foreign tax shelters that he has yet to liquidate, repatriate to the United States, and realize as foreign income. Romney is also running on two campaign promises: (1) a 100% foreign income repatriation tax holiday and (2) an eventual transition to a territorial tax system without any income tax on foreign corporate income.
So, how much money would Romney personally make by passing a repatriation tax holiday? Did he profit in 2004/5 when Bush & the GOP temporarily reduced the corporate income tax from 35 to 5 percent in a failed attempt at economic stimulus? How would a permanent territorial tax system benefit folks who hide their money in phony corporations on Grand Cayman?
Corner Stone
@Mino: One may as well ponder the vagaries of the universe while sitting naked on the back porch doing tequila shots.
Personally, I’ve been trying to determine what’s wrong with gravity.
Corner Stone
Why is it that when I see Sankaty my brain reads it as Sandusky?
Z
Another aspect of Bain/Romney deals that hasn’t been criticized is what’s meant when Bain “buys” a company. Bain doesn’t buy companies. It invents a phony corporation and invests in it to provide the money needed to buy companies. It then funnels money back to the mothership and the phony corporation can go bust without harming anyone. This is the same reason why Donald Trump can be both a multimillionaire and a serial deadbeat.
There’s something special about America where this sort of behavior is lauded when it’s done by a guy in a power suit while Rick Santelli pisses himself over people who didn’t know it was stupid to trust a real estate agent who said they could afford their house. Especially when you could easily stop this behavior by requiring the largest shareholder of any corporation going through bankruptcy to take personally responsibility for the debts or spend a year in a millionaire’s debtors prison.
handsmile
The Marquis de Mittens’ actual campaign slogan: The Royal Scam.
He’s certain to Do It Again. And with a corporate media committed to Pretzel Logic, Willard won’t be asked to explain Everything You Did. (Only a Fool Would Say That the Village will do otherwise.)
After all, Rmoney’s entitled to be King of the World, casting out that Third World Man from the White House.
Here’s a little peek how financial malfeasance is being investigated across the pond (parliamentary grilling of Barclay’s ex-CEO Bob Diamond on the explosive LIBOR scandal):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/jul/04/bob-diamond-mps-barclays-live
I’ve Got the News.
Valdivia
@handsmile:
Also. Too. Thanks for linking to this because these guys were all going to be headlining the Romney fundraiser in London at the end of the month. And they were also policy advisors. I hope someone gets on the connection pronto.
Hope your 4th of July is a wonderful one. I miss going to the Metropolitan.
handsmile
@Valdivia:
The gravitational pull of the LIBOR revelations has already begun to attract questions of possible collusion by US banksters. Not that I have a single scintilla of hope that any consequential investigation would be conducted by their employees in Congress or their pals in the press.
I hope “climate controlled environments” will be part of your holiday too, at least until this evening’s spectacle. All best wishes for a splendid day! As eager as I am to depart this urban hellhole, the thought of leaving the Met behind fills me with despair.
[btw: late last night i did finally email you. did you receive it? i ask only because the transmission seemed a little glitchy. :) ]
Valdivia
@handsmile:
Thank you, yes, will be inside, thankfully
I got it, reply to come your way later today :)
Julia Grey
Excellent!
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
But Obama hasn’t released his college, high school, and elementary school transcripts, nor his driver’s license test results, nor photos of him wearing mixed plaids, so it’s all good for Mitt.
And John McCain, I guess.
Why do you hate America?
ETA: I guess I should have included a gratuitous Dan of Steel ref, but I didn’t think I could clean that mess up.
Cap'n Swag
Obama ad says that Romney is not disclosing offshore companies. Politifact/Kessler/FactCheck say that because Romney was never cited for this, the Obama campaign is being disingenuous.
Kessler won’t give it four Pinocchios, but he will give it two. Politifact will call it “half true.”
trollhattan
Sometimes fall asleep listening to BBC on radio and last night was jarred awake listening to Tory Git/Andy Sullivanish scold Niall Ferguson tell me what we need is less financial regulation, that the Central Bank could prevent fraud with strategically raised eyebrows (no, really), that the Tea Party offers much to America’s youth and that Paul Ryan completely stanched Obama’s fiscal policies (did not specify whether is was the dreamy blue eyes or the wonderfulness of his “plan”).
Took another half hour to get to sleep after all that. This is just a clip; the whole thing is almost too much to tolerate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9734979.stm
Valdivia
@trollhattan:
Ferguson is a fucking asshole. The stuff he has been pimping since Obama’s election has been horrid. He seems to have some sort of special animus towards our Prez.
trollhattan
@Valdivia:
He’s a piece of work. One of many things that struck me with this piece (on a show called “Hard Talk” in which the interviewer is usually quite aggressive) was how he repeatedly talked over the interviewer and asserted that his being asked pointed questions was a typical BBC tactic. He contrasted it to his preference for his treatment in the US (I presume he’s a staple on Fox) and he actually played the “I’m just an uppity Scotsman–help, help I’m being repressed” card.
Since the overall topic was the Barclays scandal, the interviewer didn’t press him on his wild claims about the state of US politics, but of course he wouldn’t have been pressed by our media either, in part because the accent gives him authority.
Just ugh.
Applejinx
You can see it in her eyes
But imagine my surprise
Applejinx
You can see it in her eyes
But imagine my surprise
When I saw you…
Valdivia
@trollhattan:
I would have probably thrown the radio out of the window if I heard that. It is probably more infuriating to hear him than to read him, because when I have heard him his voice drips with entitlement.
BBA
@trollhattan: It was the raised eyebrow of the Governor of the Bank of England that led to the Barclays resignations.
burnspbesq
@BBA:
I guess this means that Bernanke just needs to eyebrow up, and everything will be fine.
FlipYrWhig
@burnspbesq: The eyebrow is a bully pulpit.
Another Bob
The Least Interesting Man You’ve Ever Known says:
Stay greedy my friends . . .
scav
Oh, just as I didn’t see it come up when people were discussing elites and resignations and such. Diamond is ‘Mercan born and his buddy del Missier is Canadian.
JR
Pretty sure Sankaty is involved in offshore oil drilling firms.
Just putting that out there. See, e.g., Mesdag v. Nancy Sue Davis Trust (In re Davis Offshore L.P.), 644 F.3d 259.