Mitt Romney's $102 million IRA; it takes someone special

[oldtime]

Quote from tmarket:

To have $1 millon in your IRA, it takes some skill. To have $102 million IRA as Mitt Romney has, it really takes someone special.

“The assertion that he broke no laws is widely accepted. But it is worth asking if it is actually true. The answer, in fact, isn’t straightforward.”

Shaxson details Romney’s stake in a series of inscrutable offshore corporations, one of which, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd, is particularly hard to decipher, partly because it was absent from several Romney financial disclosures before he finally disclosed it in his 2010 tax return.

And the blind trust that the Romney camp cites to deflect questions about potential conflicts of interest? It invested $10 million in a hedge fund co-founded by Tagg Romney. The trustee, Romney’s personal lawyer R Bradford Malt (yes, that’s his actual name), explains his investing philosophy by saying that he “liked Solamere because of its diversified approach and because he knew the founders”. There are also a now-closed Swiss bank account and continued interest in at least a dozen Cayman Islands-based Bain funds. Those funds form a large portion of Romney’s multimillion-dollar IRA. How could the IRA have grown to as much as $102 million if the maximum annual contributions were normally just $2,000? Probably by putting artificially low valuations on the securities the Romneys put into their tax-free retirement accounts in the first instance.

tmarket, the originator of this thread is long gone and on to his next site to troll. The pathetic thing is, he thinks he is creating outrage by exposing someone who shields his hard earned income from the IRS, which aint that difficult seeing as to how stupid they all are.

They (the democrats) can't even write a law which gets you, and if they could it wouldn't pass and they would never get another campaign contribution from the rich folks that support them.

It would be more interesting to analyze tmarkets mind and see just where logic went wrong. I wonder how much he had to pay in student loans to obliterate mathmatics from his mind.

Probably a lot less than I would have since I was educated before the Department of Education took over.

 

[atticus]

Quote from oldtime:

tmarket, the originator of this thread is long gone and on to his next site to troll. The pathetic thing is, he thinks he is creating outrage by exposing someone who shields his hard earned income from the IRS, which aint that difficult seeing as to how stupid they all are.

They (the democrats) can't even write a law which gets you, and if they could it wouldn't pass and they would never get another campaign contribution from the rich folks that support them.

It would be more interesting to analyze tmarkets mind and see just where logic went wrong. I wonder how much he had to pay in student loans to obliterate mathmatics from his mind.

Probably a lot less than I would have since I was educated before the Department of Education took over.

To believe that both sides of the aisle aren't equally culpable is the definition of cognitive dissonance. It's why I don't talk politics. Masturbation w/o the resulting payout.

 

[newwurldmn]

I am sure that everything has been vetted by lawyers, tax attorneys, and even the IRS. This guy probably audited every year by the IRS. Private corporations, partnerships, political posts, and a net worth that would justify the IRS going after him.

And given that he's been politically active, I would bet they've been even more conservative.

Someone on another thread here (who claimed to be a tax attorney and seemed knowledgable) said that you can put shares of private companies into your IRA when they are worthless (startups, etc). As they increase in value, the IRA keeps all the gains.

 

[Swan Noir]

It is a core constituency of his ... clearly. My point is if it appears that he played fast and loose to accumulate $102,000,000 in an IRA and there is a Swiss/Cayman component enough of those voters can be pulled to tip a close election -- think Ohio.

When you say something naive like "Romney's got the white working class vote locked down" it just makes it clear that you don't recognize that in a swing state -- again, think Ohio -- you don't know the difference between locking that vote down 67/33 rather than 65/35.

Both are a lock down. One sends you to the White House and the other sends you back to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Sharpen up your game before you talk about electoral politics. It is, in a close election, a game of perceptions and frequently a game of 20,000 votes on the swing. Not about what you do on January 20, 2013.

Quote from logic_man:

Romney's got the white working class guy vote locked down.

Whatever the guy did as a financier, the fact is that the President of the United States is not a job in which one does a lot of private sector outsourcing, but it is a job in which one can create a lot of Federal government efficiencies by firing government workers and replacing them with technology.

Since the "white working class guy making $60K" probably isn't a government worker, why would he care if a ton of them get fired? That "white working class guy" knows it will be a bunch of low-level government employees who can easily be replaced by kiosks and web sites who will bear the brunt of any downsizing movement by a Romney-led administration. While the "white working class guy making $60K" probably doesn't relish the idea of competing against those fired government workers for his next job, since those fired workers are probably the most incompetent of the incompetent, I doubt they're that much competition in the private sector job market.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...y_white_male_gap_white_women_kuhn_114579.html

 

[atticus]

Quote from Swan Noir:

Anyone who thinks atticus is an Obama supporter is simply not familiar with his thinking as expressed in his posts. His opinions here are not a result of partisan politics.

And that's why you're my favorite dem pollster! (JK)

 

[logic_man]

Quote from nkhoi:

it says to me you haven't made any Roth contribution. If you meet all the requirements the max amount is 5K to 6K per year

No, I don't have a Roth because I'm not a sucker who thinks that Congress in 2030 will honor the commitments made by Congress in the 1990's to keep the distributions tax-free.

The difference with Roth is that the contributions are post-tax, so OBVIOUSLY the limits are going to be more strictly enforced.

I don't mean to be rude, but, come on, can someone please say something sensible?

 

[logic_man]

Quote from Swan Noir:

It is a core constituency of his ... clearly. My point is if it appears that he played fast and loose to accumulate $102,000,000 in an IRA and there is a Swiss/Cayman component enough of those voters can be pulled to tip a close election -- think Ohio.

When you say something naive like "Romney's got the white working class vote locked down" it just makes it clear that you don't recognize that in a swing state -- again, think Ohio -- you don't know the difference between locking that vote down 67/33 rather than 65/35.

Both are a lock down. One sends you to the White House and the other sends you back to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Sharpen up your game before you talk about electoral politics. It is, in a close election, a game of perceptions and frequently a game of 20,000 votes on the swing. Not about what you do on January 20, 2013.

Yeah, and my point is that those guys are more worried about their next paycheck vs. where Romney got his $100M. Hell, in 5 years Obama will be worth more than Romney from speaking fees alone, so if the decision is between "rich guy who already made his money" and "rich guy who will make his money after he either loses or leaves office after a 2nd term", I'm not sure that makes an iota of difference.

And yes, 20K votes can swing a state. Duh. The entire article I linked was about marginal differences in either non-white or white turnout in the election. Do we need to have block-by-block voter registration data for Ohio before we can give an opinion now? In that case, I hear the Smith family in Dublin, OH was leaning Obama but now that the family patriarch Joe Smith lost his job as a VP of Operations for Cardinal Health as a result of Obamacare, he might be leaning Romney, and it's a well-known fact that Joe Smith has influenced 5 of his neighbors to vote his way in 4 of the last 6 Presidential elections, so clearly my info is more up-to-date than yours. Sheesh.

 

[oldtime]

Quote from atticus:

To believe that both sides of the aisle aren't equally culpable is the definition of cognitive dissonance. It's why I don't talk politics. Masturbation w/o the resulting payout.

the unfortunate thing atticus is, you still beleive there is such a thing as "both sides of the aisle."

 

[Swan Noir]

Locked down has no meaning. No one suggested Obama can win the white male blue collar vote but I think the Dems can cast doubt upon Romney's support for the working man and pull enough of those votes to have a real shot at Ohio.

Quote from logic_man:

Yeah, and my point is that those guys are more worried about their next paycheck vs. where Romney got his $100M. Hell, in 5 years Obama will be worth more than Romney from speaking fees alone, so if the decision is between "rich guy who already made his money" and "rich guy who will make his money after he either loses or leaves office after a 2nd term", I'm not sure that makes an iota of difference.

And yes, 20K votes can swing a state. Duh. The entire article I linked was about marginal differences in either non-white or white turnout in the election. Do we need to have block-by-block voter registration data for Ohio before we can give an opinion now? In that case, I hear the Smith family in Dublin, OH was leaning Obama but now that the family patriarch Joe Smith lost his job as a VP of Operations for Cardinal Health as a result of Obamacare, he might be leaning Romney, and it's a well-known fact that Joe Smith has influenced 5 of his neighbors to vote his way in 4 of the last 6 Presidential elections, so clearly my info is more up-to-date than yours. Sheesh.

 

[oldtime]

you know, over in Ireland you can bet on these things, and then this discussion would have some real relevance.