Bush and Romney (and the richest Americans) built that! Romney plans to give even more tax cuts to the super rich — maybe he’ll keynote the Summit one day.
Buzzfeed: Former President George W. Bush is set to deliver the keynote address at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit on Grand Cayman just a few days before the election. The conference will feature Bush as the keynote speaker on the first night, and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson on the second night. ”Institutional investors, private investors, asset allocators, fund managers, service providers, academics and regulators will benefit from this discussion on the future of the industry,” reads to the FAQ section of the website.
“Romney is so inordinately proud of his enormous wealth, which he mentions at every opportunity, that he apparently assumed it would command unquestioned respect from the masses. He’s been actively running for president for six years, but – even to the amazement of Fox News – it never occurred to him that it might not be terribly appealing to American voters that a potential president hoards his millions in the tax shelters of Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Or that an election year in the midst of an economic recession might not be the moment to spend $12 million renovating his beach house in California, complete with an elevator for his cars. Or that perhaps his wife should have been encouraged to take up another hobby besides $400,000 dressage horses.”
Now, Governor Romney believes that with that even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy and fewer regulations on Wall Street all of us will prosper. In other words he’d double down on the same trickle down policies that led to the crisis in the first place. So what’s my plan?
First, we create a million new manufacturing jobs and help businesses double their exports. Give tax breaks to companies that invest in America, not that ship jobs overseas.
Second, we cut our oil imports in half and produce more American-made energy, oil, clean-coal, natural gas, and new resources like wind, solar and bio-fuels—all while doubling the fuel efficiencies of cars and trucks.
Third, we insure that we maintain the best workforce in the world by preparing 100,000 additional math and science teachers. Training 2 million Americans with the job skills they need at our community colleges. Cutting the growth of tuition in half and expanding student aid so more Americans can afford it.
Fourth, a balanced plan to reduce our deficit by four trillion dollars over the next decade on top of the trillion in spending we’ve already cut, I’d ask the wealthy to pay a little more. And as we end the war in Afghanistan let’s apply half the savings to pay down our debt and use the rest for some nation building right here at home.
It’s time for a new economic patriotism. Rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class. Read my plan. Compare it to Governor Romney’s and decide for yourself. Thanks for listening.
Meanwhile, what’s happening over at Republican Party HQ? Business as usual — who needs a new economic patriotism when the old economic “patriotism” is working just fine for the few, thankyouverymuch:
Former President George W. Bush is set to deliver the keynote address at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit on Grand Cayman just a few days before the election. The conference will feature Bush as the keynote speaker on the first night, and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson on the second night. “Institutional investors, private investors, asset allocators, fund managers, service providers, academics and regulators will benefit from this discussion on the future of the industry,” reads to the FAQ section of the website. The timing of the conference could land awkwardly during an election season that’s been marked by speculation about Mitt Romney’s finances, particularly his offshore investments in tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
“The reason Romney pays a rate of only 14 percent on $13 million of income in 2011 — a lower rate than many in the middle class — is because he exploits a loophole that allows private equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent. And that loophole exists solely because private equity and hedge fund managers have so much political clout — as a result of their huge fortunes and the money they’ve donated to political candidates — that neither party will remove it.”
Hilariously, Romney explained that the lower tax rate on capital gains isfair and a well-earned reward or incentive because lower tax rates on the wealthy “put people to work.” Except the Capital Gains Elite haven’t been using the savings to create jobs in America, not for a long time — instead they’ve been hording their U.S. tax savings in other countries like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, haven’t they? Just look at Romney’s two tax returns.
And Mitt thinks the wealthy should have even more tax breaks?
“If Mitt was Santa Claus, he’d fire the reindeer and outsource the elves… Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. In Matthew, chapter 6, verse 21, the scriptures teach us that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. My friends, any man who aspires to be our president should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America. And it’s well past time for Mitt Romney to come clean with the American people.” — Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, in his Tuesday night address to the Democratic National Convention.
“Unlike President Obama, you don’t have to wait until after the election to find out what I believe in — or what my plans are.” — Mitt Romney’s biggest lie so far
Mitt Romney says he wants to talk about issues but he refuses to talk about the following:
his tax returns (and accounts in Bermuda, the Caymans, and Switzerland)
Romney is constantly attempting to change the conversation from Bain or his tax returns (or anything else he doesn’t want to talk about) with “issues,” as in, “we need to talk about the real issues!” But paraphrasing Romney’s own campaign advisers, who revealed their strategy recently: details and specifics are for losers. So how exactly can you debate issues without specifics or details?
You don’t. You can’t. It’s obvious the Romney campaign isn’t trying to sway voters with Mitt’s ideas or plans — or even with Mitt himself as a “person.” They’re running a ‘just trust me’ campaign, as Greg Sargent explains:
Romney advisers are explicitly confirming that all of this is part of a grand strategy to only signal general direction to the American people. It’s a guiding idea that specifics are a political peril to be avoided. The campaign thinks sharing details about what he’d actually do as president would be politically suicidal. As Steve Benen asks: “what does it say about the merit of Romney’s policy agenda if voters are likely to recoil if they heard the whole truth?” And this is coming after the campaign touted the selection of Paul Ryan as proof that the GOP ticket is deeply serious about policy and committed to making the tough decisions Democrats won’t.
Just trust Mitt Romney — you’ll find out why after he wins the election. Really.
Gawker has posted 954 pages of previously unseen and labyrinthine Bain financial documents which they say may reveal proof of Mitt Romney’s attempt to cloak his massive holdings in tax-proof domestic and offshore accounts.
Bain isn’t a company so much as an intricate suite of steadily proliferating inter-related holding companies and limited partnerships, some based in Delaware and others in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and elsewhere, designed to collectively house roughly $66 billion in wealth in its many crevices and chambers. When Romney left in 1999, he and his wife retained significant investments in many of those Bain vehicles—he claims they are “passive investments” and that they are managed in a blind trust (though the trustee isn’t blind enough to meet federal standards of independence). But aside from disparate snippets of information contained in his federal and Massachusetts financial disclosure forms, his 2010 tax returns, and SEC filings, the nature of those investments has been obfuscated by design.
The private equity firm founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made use of arcane techniques in several of its Cayman Islands-based funds to avoid U.S. taxes, according to a trove of Bain Capital’s private audit and finance records made public on the website Gawker today.
The audited financial statements of one of the Cayman Islands funds make note of the use of “blocker” entities, which are used to help retirement accounts and nonprofit entities avoid some taxes. Financial statements for another fund note that it “intends to conduct its operations so it will … not be subject to United States federal income or withholding tax …”
Those details emerge on the statements of two funds in which Romney still holds a sizeable investment, according to the financial disclosure statements he filed when he announced his bid for president.
The publication of the Bain Documents on the Gawker website could rekindle debate about Romney’s role at the company, and specifically about Bain’s decision to domicile many of its funds in offshore locations known as tax havens.
Fortune‘s Dan Primack calls the documents “worthless” and says he had them months ago…
[O]ne immediate revelation is that Sankaty fund, based in Delaware for tax purposes, lent over $3 million to Las Vegas Sands, the casino company owned by Adelson. The fund made two loans of $2.4 million and $600,000 in 2009 to the Sands. Romney’s IRA held between $250,000 and $500,000 in the partnership, and made $50,000 and $100,000 from it in 2011. Adelson has become the largest donor to the Republican Party and conservative outside groups, dropping at least $70 million.
We know a few things from one return. Imagine what we’d learn from ten more! Unbelievably, the Republican Party continues to defend this guy’s obstructionism and secrecy—he’s their presidential candidate!
CBS News: “With about 55,000 inhabitants, the Cayman Islands should not be a well-known name in the rest of the world, but the tiny Caribbean territory has become famous as a tax haven for the world’s super rich. According to a new report, the Caymans – along with the other dozen or so international havens for wealth like Switzerland and Bermuda – are the holders of so much of the world’s capital, entire regional economies could be moved on it. The Tax Justice Network has just released a report estimating that the world’s tax havens house anywhere from $21 trillion to $32 trillion of money that governments cannot tax.”
It has been revealed that Mitt Romney keeps part of his fortune in all three tax havens mentioned above: the Caymans, Switzerland, and Bermuda. And he wants to be president.
Josh Marshall asks: ”With IRA contributions capped at $6,000 a year, how did Mitt manage to amass an IRA worth $100 million? Hint: an Island might be involved.”
I think the Island of Misfit Toys may be the only island on earth not holding part of the Romney fortune.
“Little noticed in the academic discussions of financialization is the role of offshore tax havens, one of the big reasons the financial sector has become so powerful. In 1966, Michael Hudson, a young Chase Manhattan balance-of-payments economist, was in a company elevator when he was handed a memo by a former State Department operative. The memo came from the U.S. government, and Hudson was tasked with figuring out how much foreign money the U.S. might attract. “They were saying, ‘We want to replace Switzerland,’ ” Hudson explains. “All this money will come here if we make this the criminal center of the world. We wanted foreign criminal money, which was patriotic, but not American criminal money.”
“In the years since then, almost unknown to most Americans, the United States has turned itself into a giant tax haven for foreigners, just as the memo suggested. Federal and state tax laws have been deliberately shaped to give foreigners special tax exemptions unavailable to Americans, plus financial secrecy and exemptions from regulatory restraints. “We have criticized offshore tax havens for their secrecy and lack of transparency,” said Senator Carl Levin. “But look what is going on in our own backyard.”
“In this grand scenario, tax havens such as the Caymans serve as feeders of foreign savings into Tax Haven U.S.A. from abroad, providing foreign investors with additional ways to skip around tax, disclosure, and regulatory requirements that they might trigger if they invested directly.
“The money sucked into Tax Haven U.S.A., often via the “feeder” tax havens, is frequently tax-evading and other criminal foreign money, in the spirit of Hudson’s 1966 memo, and it is predominantly channeled not into productive investment but into real estate and financial business.”
Does this imply that if an American quarter-billionaire can get his wealth into foreign off-shore accounts, he can funnel it back into America with “special tax exemptions,” because it’s been magically transformed into foreign money. I guess that’s how the one percent launder their money, pay little or no federal tax, and call themselves patriots.
Mitt Romney wants your vote — he just doesn’t want to tell you how much he’s really worth or where he keeps all his money.
