Hot Features
Premium
Register for Free to get streaming real-time quotes, interactive charts, live options flow, and more.
Mitt Romney is a Presidential candidate, and as such his finances are finally coming to the surface. As is the nature of some of those about to join the highest levels of the government, Mitt has been hiding huge amounts of money for a long time and finally has to admit it to the world. Because of his early campaign idea of projecting an image of a businessman savior, the whiners of the world have decried his wealth as a sign of evil.
So, how much does he have?
While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with making large sums of money through skill and wiles, detractors find something wrong with doing this if one aspires to a major public office. As such, the public has been clamoring for as much of Mitt Romney’s financial information as it can get. Apparently, even Mr. Romney’s own campaign isn’t sure how rich he is, estimating his wealth at somewhere between $190 million and $250 million. To put this in perspective, he may only have been able to save up to 63 times what the average American will make across a lifetime, or he may have 83 times what most people can ever expect to earn.
On the one hand, the particulars make a difference. It does seem strange that Mitt was initially unwilling to release the most recent few years’ worth of income tax information, as this is precisely the sort of thing people talk about all the time in polite conversation. On top of that, Mr. Romney did reportedly make $42.5 million in 2010 and 2011. While Americans will never know exactly where $3 trillion go every year in the federal budget, the precise origins of .00014% of that money are vitally important.
Where does he park it?
Mitt is a well-diversified man, with roughly $500,000 in gold alone. His wife even owns race horses in the half-million-dollar range, as well. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Romney’s financial disclosure in his application to run for President read like a portfolio that had been sculpted to have nothing controversial. That in itself sounds a little shady, considering both that a substantial portion of Mitt’s holdings have been sheltered in the Cayman Islands and that some people see conspiracies everywhere.
While Mr. Romney holds shares of highly diversified ETFs like the iShares MSCI EAFE Index(Amex: EFA) and SPDR S&P 500 (Amex: SPY), there are exceptions like the Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F). According to sources that apparently can’t count very well, Mitt has between a quarter and half a million dollars worth of the quintessentially American Ford shares. If his portfolio were more carefully constructed to look all-American and smartly diversified, he’d have to be a supervillain worthy of James Bond.
Foreign Companies, ADRs, and Bonds
Romney has substantial investments outside America. Whatever be his lack of international political astuteness and lack of experience which produced the recent Olympic and Israel-Palestine gaffes, Mitt is one Presidential-hopeful who understands international finance well. He has invested millions of dollars outside America. He holds over 2 million USD in government bonds from countries like Norway and Sweden. He held and sold foreign ADRs of companies like Kingfisher (PINK:KGFHF) and Infosys (India) (NASDAQ: INFY), Komatsu (PINK:KMTUY), various Hong Kong based ADRs, European ADRs from the likes of Nestle (PINK:NSRGY), Sab Miller (PINK:SBMRY), Fresenius (NYSE: FMS) and others. To be fair, he also held shares in almost every blue chip American company like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). (You can keep track of these companies by registering at ADVFN)
Mitt has invested a substantial amount of money into overseas companies. While America might not be the only economically important country in the world, it’s the one most Americans work in. With companies like Komatsu, Infosys and the Iranian oil companies Mitt has made tens of millions of dollars by investing into, it stands to reason that his interests are a little too far-flung to be especially concerned with creating American jobs and helping the American economy.
As the campaign draws nearer and increasing public scrutiny over the tiny amounts of taxes Mr. Romney pays on his massive investment income — reportedly 13.9%, whereas most Americans earning far less pay a far greater percentage — it may not help his chances of beating President Barack Obama’s message of taxing the rich to get the country back on track.
On the other hand, this may be a man who knows how to make money and live well; maybe he will create policies that will help the country learn a trick or two in that regard. Financial astuteness is a gift that many of his perhaps about to be predecessors sadly lacked, costing the nation trillions in war mongering and confused leadership.
President Obama was pursued with hostility to prove his citizenship by the republicans, which he finaly did by producing his birth certificate.
I therefore think that Governor Romney should be hunted untill he produce his tax returns for the last 5 to 10 years. He may not have paid any taxes for the last several years, the public have a right to know.
If the McCain campaign received more than 10 years of Mr. Romneys tax returns in their vetting process of Mr.Romney for the Vice Presidency they have an ethical and moral obligation to put an end to this issue. This election campaign will not move on to the issues that are truely important to the vast majority of Americans until Mr. Romneys tax returns are made available to the public.
When money leaves the country liquidity drops. The problem I have with Willard is he is a hypocrite. By removing his wealth from the country that money does not circulate, banks can’t loan it, no national investment comes from it. In the stricktest trickle down view, that wealth was acquired then removed.
As a Republicam Willard has to mouth the words or “trickle down theory” but he does not live by them. The wealth that trickled into his accounts became a gushing river leaving the country.
Willards wealth is not a sign of evil, just greed. Even more so as he hides it like a miser.
Willard is the poster boy for the 1%. The Republican party couldn’t have chosen a more fitting candidate for themselves.
Mitt Romney has been very successful at making money and at keeping it safe from the IRS. He has never shown any interest in the welfare of the general public . He does not seem to have any other goal than to be president simply for the sake of being president and he is willing to spend as much money as it takes and say whatever is required to get elected.
It is a pity the Republicans were not capable of selecting a candidate with a sense of moral responsibility. Obama and the Democrats have not shown any capacity to steer the country out of a crisis created in part by the kind of Wall Street greed that made Romney rich so they will not be getting my vote. Neither will Romney.
I don, t blame him for getting his money out. The cost and size of government and it,s deficits and debt keeps increasing and he has decided to run to correct the problem. He should be asked if he will bring his money home when he corrects the problem.
Let Mitt be a leader ? let him cut welfare and government help. To the less fortunate , with all his wealth a small % could help a child go to sleep at night not being hungry. ( in this country).
Not all of us are the chosen people.
s GREED IS A SIN
.
What is important here is not how an astute businessman does business in the past, as long as he was above board. What is important is how he leads the country in the future. Understanding the needs of businesses and what makes them grow is the most important issue facing our political system. Without growth, there would be no jobs for the unemployed. WIthout investments, there can be no growth. With a government that does everything for us, and makes us pay for it in terms of higher taxes, greater debts and higher inflation, we are moving quickly away from intelligent management. It may seem, like in the prior years, that government spending is great for everybody–fair, sensitive and so forth. It seemed like massive borrowing above GDP growth was a great idea for the last 50 years also. That way we could have alot of wars and military growth, enforce our beliefs on the world and preach a relative moralism. Yet, in retrospect, this was the road to how we got here. Soros writes about the theory of “reflexivity” or a social environment where “facts” are acted upon by “participents” producing a reflex of reality, thereby creating the opposite of equiplibrium levels, based on the manipulations of the individual. In this way, facts are manipulated by people to create outcomes which they desire for their own personal interest.
An example might be Al Gore who used environmental issues to create wealthl–apparently as I hear–for himself, or G Bush, who used 911 to declare war and create some interesting international policy maneuvers in a very real manipulation of the facts–to create new facts and realities. The original reality was unpalatable for Americans, so he invented a new one and we bought it.
Therefore, it is not the facts that we should be concerned about, but the agendas of people. Barret might win again. He might be a nice guy. But he is no American leader to higher ground–only to a leftist belief system which is the antithesis of America. Yet, we have no one to blame except his predecessors. In closing, if one can’t manage his own finances and display both moral courage and success–both characteristics missing from the Obamas, since they “resigned” from the legal profession under some clouds, since they never really worked in businesses or had respect for free enterprise, owing at least in part to their racial heritage, they are in fact the wrong people for the job.
Thanks for your comments, everyone. Just trying to be fair to the guy here, but doesn’t anyone have any positive spin on Mitt Romney? I mean, come on, especially with Ryan coming in, I think the Rep. team has a lot of +ves to it. Historically, Republican governments have done well for the country’s finances, despite George Bush and his wars. Romney, with his vast wealth, at least has some idea about how the financial world works, unlike Obama who doesn’t always seem to have a clue.