Romney Exposed by Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair has a bombshell investigative article on Mitt Romney's holdings in the Caymen Islands and elsewhere, as well as some explanation of how Bain Capital preyed on companies in order to raid their pension funds, which they would then roll into other sketchy investments.

Even though the reporters say several times that Bain isn't doing anything exactly illegal, I found the article quite disturbing. It's a must read!

Vanity Fair: Where the Money Lives

Something is fishy about all this - no pun intended. And I might add I normally wouldn't care, and most people in our country wouldn't care at all since we expect rich people to lie about their assets and hide them in shelters, but Mitt Romney is running for President! We have to hold him to some kind of standard. Remember how Hillary Clinton was dragged through the mud just for earning money on a legitimate investment? That was nothing compared to this.

The two paragraphs below were eye-opening. When is a "blind trust" not so blind?

Page One:

. . . there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates.

Page Two:

. . . All the assets on Mitt’s financial disclosures are in blind trusts or retirement accounts held by him and Ann. Blind trusts are designed to avoid conflicts of interest for those in public office by having politicians’ assets managed by independent trustees. The Romneys’ blind trust was created when Mitt was elected governor of Massachusetts. Curiously, the Romneys appointed Bradford Malt as their trustee. It’s certainly true that under Malt the trusts don’t appear to be as blind as they might be: for instance, in 2010 the Romneys invested $10 million in the start-up of the Solamere Founders Fund, co-founded by their eldest son, Tagg, and Spencer Zwick, Romney’s onetime top campaign fund-raiser; Solamere is now in the Ann Romney blind trust. Malt has said he invested in Solamere without consulting Mitt or Ann and explained he liked Solamere because of its diversified approach and because he knew the founders and had confidence in them