Mr.
Mitt Romney, now basically the de facto GOP candidate for the November 2012
Presidential election, has now released his Public Financial Disclosure Report
for all of 2011 to the Federal Election Commission, dated June 1, 2012. For the purposes of this posting, I'll pick out a few of
the interesting points since we already know that Mr. Romney is well ensconced
in the .01 percent.
Here
is the first page of the Disclosure that shows Mr. Romney's income and a
valuation of some of his assets (and those of his wife as well):
Like
many of his wealthy counterparts (and, for that matter, most of us), Mr. Romney carries a
reasonable balance in his bank account, in this case, his Bank of America cash
account. In that account, his balance ranges between $250,001 and
$500,000, basically the average price of two American homes. We all know
that interest rates on bank cash accounts really suck right now but Mr. Romney
managed to haul in between $1,001 and $2,500 in interest, a number that is
close to what many Americans have as a total balance in their chequing
accounts! On top of this, he has a rather comfortable bank deposit at Goldman
Sachs (who else?), ranging between $5,000,001 and $25,000,000 which appears to
be his largest, single asset line item. I guess this is his "just in
case I see something that I just have to buy right now" money.
As a
former director of Marriott, Mr. Romney received annual stock retainers for
2009 and 2010 totalling $260,389.74, an annual rate of nearly two and a half
times the average American household income. On top of that, he received
speaker's fees from four speeches at such wide-ranging establishments and
events as Emory University ($11,475) and the International Franchise
Association meeting in Las Vegas ($68,000); the speaker's fees for the four
events totalled $189,975 for an average of $47,493.75 per event.
Here
are a sampling of the eight pages that show exactly what assets Mr. Romney and
his wife own:
Mr.
Romney is rather heavily invested in Federal Home Loan Bank bonds (FHLB), holding between $14.5 million and
$62 million in FHLB bonds of varying maturities. Other investments of
interest are his holdings in European bonds, particularly from the countries of
Sweden and Norway, two of the more stable nations in the European stable. He owns between $200,000 and $500,000 in bonds from
both nations, all maturing before 2016. He also owns a similar quantity
of bonds issued by both Canada and Australia.
Lastly,
let's take a look at what Mr. Romney has been selling over the year that was
2011 because it's always interesting to see where their heads are:
He sold between $566,600 and $1.918 million worth of stock
in 66 different companies ranging from Canadian National Railway to Volkswagen.
This is actually a relatively small part of his overall portfolio given
that this new Disclosure values his net worth at between $190 million and $250
million. Not bad for an avowed capitalist, is it?
And what's your point? Should we not like the man because he is successful? Seems to me I want a successful President.
ReplyDeleteNot if his success is at the expense of the many working people whose jobs he outsourced or erased and pensions he plundered. He's a blood-sucker. Running this country is NOT the same as running a business.
DeleteNo, this guy wants four more years of utter failure
ReplyDeleteYou want to see failure? elect Romney. Oh it will be salad days to the .01%, the rest of us will tossed under the bus.
DeleteThe purpose of this posting was solely for interest's sake. I think that we can learn something about those we elect from pretty much every aspect of their lives, most particularly, about where they have invested their money.
ReplyDeleteI would much prefer another 4 years of Obama than Romney. If you want the rich to continue to get richer, and the middle class poorer, well then ,vote for Romney. When everything goes back worse than we are now, then you have no right to complain. Yes, the same old policies that caused the drain on the USA will go back to where they were during the Bush era. Romney, Bush's clone, will not improve anything , and if you think so then you are living in the past.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange that True Believers don't seem to get at all upset while Obama lives very large - at our expense. Or, haven't you noticed that?
DeleteFellow Anonymous: Mr. Romney made $21 million off his investments last year. At a typical tax rate of 35% this "income" - some of which came as a result of middle class Americans losing their jobs - was taxed at 15% instead of 35%. Even if you allow "write offs" of say 20% of his income, basic math says that these tax loopholes cost the American Treasury $3,360,000. And that's one year, during which he knew he would have to release his returns. We don't know what he made (or paid) over the last 7-8 years because he won't release his returns, even though his father did so when he ran for president. And if Romney were President, what makes you think that he wouldn't live as large (or larger!), especially since MOST of the "expense" you're complaining about is security, to which Mr. Romney would also be entitled? For goodness sakes: his CAR has an elevator, and his HORSE has an airplane!
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ReplyDeleteNow, it really would be an interesting exercise for one of Romney's supporters to explain just how the GOP would improve the lot of your average American over the next four plus years. This is when it is the publicly declared position of the GOP that they would retain all the Bush-era tax cuts on the hyper-wealthy whilst they would cut the benefits and entitlements of working Americans. When the Reaganite/Friedmanite theory of "trickle-down" has been shown to have been one of the most fraudulent pieces of econo-political pseudo guff ever produced, the vacuousness (that means "emptiness" or "hollowness" for all of the "Anonymous" contributors to this post) of the GOP/Tea Party's economic platform is shown for what it really is: simply nothing - just pure wishful thinking.
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ReplyDelete