Washington Post examines Romney’s retirement package from Bain Capital

September 3, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Washington Post examines Willard "Mittens" Romney's retirement package from Bain Capital today, with an emphasis on the "carried interest" tax deduction only available to the super-rich, and his supercharged IRA account. Mitt Romney exited Bain Capital with rare tax benefits in retirement – The Washington Post:

Before Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital, the enormously profitable investment firm he founded, he made sure to lock in his gains, both realized and expected, for years to come.

He did so, in part, the way millions of other Americans do — with the tax benefits of an individual retirement account. But he was able to turbocharge the impact of those advantages and other tax breaks in his severance package from Bain in a way that few but the country’s super-rich can ever hope to do.

As a result, his IRA could be worth as much as $87 million, according to his estimates, and he can continue to earn tax-advantaged income from Bain more than a decade after he formally left the firm.

* * *

The structure and tax treatment of his retirement, including the IRA, was legally sound and appropriate, [Bain] says, adding that he has earned less money over his career than some other top private-equity executives, who earned billions of dollars during the same period.

Details of Romney’s retirement assets are somewhat vague because he has released only one year of full tax returns and declined to provide additional specifics about his personal finances. But interviews with Bain executives and accounting professionals show that he was able to take advantage of tax benefits in innovative ways open only to a narrow slice of extremely affluent people — mostly those who work in private-equity firms and other investment partnerships.

Revisiting Old Posts — One On, One Off

September 2, 2012

Posted by Bob Lord In my first substantive post here, back in January, I described how we were living through the "Atlas Shrugged Upside Down," a society where damaging conservative policies are allowed to proceed to their crazy conclusion. You can read it here: http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2012/01/atlas-shrugged-upside-down.html Turns out, I was on point in two respects. First, the … Read more

Rolling Stone: An FDIC bailout ‘built it’ – Bain Capital

September 2, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone has another blockbuster investigative report into Willard "Mittens" Romney and his time at Bain Capital. "The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney: Government documents prove the candidate's mythology is just that":

Mitt Romney likes to say he won't "apologize" for his success in business. But what he never says is "thank you" – to the American people – for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible.

According to the candidate's mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When The Boston Globe reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a "long-shot miracle," bragging that he had "saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company."

In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.

Continue reading this richly detailed report. The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney.

See: Mitt Romney's Federal Bailout: The Documents.

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone also has a lengthy exposé on Willard "Mittens" Romney and his time at Bain Capital. Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital:

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.