Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Bain Files: massive trove of confidential Romney documents

Update, the following morning: the U.S. media has not found any bombshells here. At least yet.

Sharp intake of breath, followed by a long, low whistle. Take a look at this:
"Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that [Romney] has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade.
. . . Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested.
. . .
Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies."
(Hat tip: various.) And for background reading on the unsavoury Romney thing before this came out, take a look at TJN's Nicholas Shaxson in the August edition of Vanity Fair.

Oceans more on this, from us and probably every financial journalist in the world, in due course.

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