The Romney Money Machine (for Me! Me! Me!)

If it had been revealed that Mitt Romney, presidential aspirant, was hiding a secret mistress in an island mansion, the headlines would be pouring lurid commentary for weeks.  Since the mistress in this case is Ms. MoneyPenny, there is hardly a blink.  In fact, he has a Mistress Money in at least 5  different countries — Bermuda, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Caymans — only one of which has merited a mention in any official papers.

What is going on here folks?  The man who wants to lead the free world, and be the President of ALL the people, hides his money so we won’t know about it?  What else will he hide?  A man who uses the IRA, tax sheltered savings, to which most of us can contribute a maximum of $6,000 annually, has  over $100 million in it? A man who talks about creating jobs cuts them with glee.

Vanity Fair picks up from the flurry of news earlier in the year that Romney has Cayman accounts and gives a pretty thorough look at the gentleman’s problem.

 Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers

Bain cut R&D spending to an average of 8 percent of sales, a little more than half what its competitors were doing. Cindy Hewitt, Dade’s human-resources manager, remembers how the firm closed a Puerto Rico plant in 1998, a year after harvesting $7.1 million in local tax breaks aimed at job creation, and relocated some staff to Miami, then the company’s most profitable plant. Based on re­a­ssur­ances she had received from her superiors, she told those uprooting themselves from Puerto Rico that their jobs in Miami were safe for now—but then Bain closed the Miami plant. “Whether you want to call it misled, or lied, or manipulated, I do not believe they provided full information about what discussions were under way,” she says. “I would never want to be part of even unintentionally treating people so poorly.” (p 3)

 The New York Times lead editorial refers to this enormous lack of knowledge about Romney’s wealth as Mitt Romney’s Black Hole