Vital Concerns for the World: A glimpse into the world of the super-rich: The little help Romney gets from his friends

Saturday, January 28, 2012

A glimpse into the world of the super-rich: The little help Romney gets from his friends

It’s hard to believe what politicians say when they are seeking election. Mitt Romney has said that he didn’t inherit his huge wealth but earned it. Strange thing to say of the son of the former President of American Motors, former governor of Michigan, and once a candidate for President of the United States.

Here is an excerpt of what the New York Times says about the financial support that Romney is now getting from his friends.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/politics/close-ties-to-goldman-enrich-romneys-public-and-private-lives.html]

The securities and investment industry has given more money to Mr. Romney than any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and some of its leading figures have donated millions of dollars to Restore Our Future, the “super PAC” bolstering Mr. Romney’s campaign. Goldman employees are also the biggest source of donations to Free & Strong America PAC, a group Mr. Romney founded but no longer controls.

But Mr. Romney’s personal finances are particularly entwined with Goldman.

His federal financial disclosure statements show Mr. Romney and his wife, their blind trusts and their family foundation to be prodigious consumers of the bank’s services. In 2011, Mr. Romney’s blind trust and the couple’s retirement accounts held as much as $36.7 million in at least two dozen Goldman investment vehicles, earning as much as $3 million a year in income. Mrs. Romney’s trust had at least $10.2 million in Goldman funds — possibly much more — earning as much as $6.2 million.

Tax returns released by the campaign this week also highlighted some of the privileges Mr. Romney enjoyed as a friend of Goldman: In May 1999, a few months after he left Bain to run the Salt Lake City Olympics, Goldman allowed Mr. Romney to buy at least 7,000 Goldman shares during the firm’s lucrative initial public offering — a generous allotment even among Goldman clients, according to people with knowledge of the deal. When Mr. Romney’s trusts sold the shares in December 2010, a few months before he formed his presidential exploratory committee for the 2012 race, they returned a profit of $750,000.

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A major source of the American debt problem

Notable Concerns

"Not one has taken responsibility for the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history." Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rica, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. AlJazeera 10/15/11
GE, America's largest corporation, paid no taxes last year even though it made 5.1 billion dollars profit in the country [and even more outside the country] [source: same as below]
In 2009 the richest 5% held 63.5% of American wealth; the bottom 80% controlled 12.8%. [source: same as below]
Between 2000 and 2007 the richest 10% in America benefited from all of the average growth in the period. In the post WW II period the top 10% benefited from only one third of the growth, the bottom 90% benefiting from the rest of the growth. [Economic Policy Institute, cited by Bob Herbert, NYT 3/26/11]
In 2010 a "premier" investment bank paid each of its 26,000 employees an average of $370,000. [Bill Gross Pimco Investment Outlook Feb, 2011.]
In 2005, one-quarter of the corporations in America making a trillion dolars in revenue paid no taxes.
The 833% Medical Insurance Ripoff: Medicare charges 3% for service; the health insurance companies in Missouri charge 25% for services
The richest 1 percent of Americans have more net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
The richest 1 percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 50%. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/dec/10/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-viral-speech-says-top-1$ >