Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Does Romney Even Know What the Word “Plan” MEANS?

Romney released a new middle class economic plan [today].  [The] plan is called: “Mitt Romney’s new plan for a stronger middle class.” It contains ideas we’ve heard before: more access to domestic energy resources; cutting taxes and capping spending; repealing Obamacare. Mark Hopkins at Moody’s Analytics tells me that it is mostly a set of […]

Romney’s Weird Plan to Decouple Military Spending From National Security Needs and to Tie It Instead to … GDP??

Romney’s plan calls for linking the Pentagon’s base budget to Gross Domestic Product, and allowing the military to spend at least $4 dollars out of every $100 the American economy produces.” — Defense spending to spike $2.1 trillion under Romney, CNN Money, May 10, 2012.) In a post here two weeks ago I noted that […]

Bull In a China Shop

Romney said a Polish leader told him during his visit that his country’s economic philosophy is, “You don’t borrow what you can’t pay back.” The presumptive Republican presidential nominee used the line to draw an implicit contrast with President Obama, saying the world — and, by definition, the United States — should emulate Poland’s economic […]

Culture Indeed Makes All the Difference. (Just not necessarily in the way Romney meant.)

JERUSALEM — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney angered Palestinian leaders on Monday when he suggested here that the Israeli economy had outpaced the economy of the Palestinian territories in part because of advantages of “culture.” … Romney said he had studied a book called “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” searching for an answer about […]

About Ann Romney’s—And Other MS Victims’—Darkest Hour (those who have healthcare insurance, those who have very high deductibles, and those who may lose their jobs and be unable to get new healthcare insurance. Or a dressage horse.)

  The DNC has apologized for using Ann Romney’s London Olympics-bound horse in an attack targeting her husband. The Hill explains that Democrats had used the dressage horse to illustrate its claim that the presumptive GOP nominee was “dancing around the issue” of his decision not to release his tax returns. (Dressage is a dance-like sport, but […]

What’s Romney Got to Hide? It’s past time for financial and tax transparency

by Linda Beale What’s Romney Got to Hide? It’s past time for financial and tax transparency As everybody who has followed anything about this election cycle knows, Mitt Romney–likely the wealthiest man to run for president, the only bankster/private equity fund founder (sole shareholder, CEO and manager) to run for president, and probably the only […]

Yglesias Misses the Point. Again. [with correction]

Rules requiring firms to restrict employment to their country of origin would be hideously inefficient if applied on a global basis, and they would be every bit as devastating to American employees of foreign firms as offshoring by American firms is to workers who lose their jobs here. (One might also ask where the borders […]

Matthew Yglesias, Slate’s Boy With a Little Curl

Lost in the shuffle here is the question of what it is Romney is denying he’s responsible for. Stipulate that Romney somehow had nothing to do with running a company of which he was the CEO and sole shareholder. Does he think, in retrospect, that his subordinates did something wrong by offshoring jobs? Clearly he […]

Was Romney’s Bain-Era IRA Tactic Really Legal In That Circumstance? [with UPDATE from Business Insider]

In a comment to my post yesterday titled “Romney’s VERY Private Equity,” which asked how Romney was able to metasticze his Bain-era IRA account to accumulate more than $100 million—Investment in Apple stock?  In precious-metals funds?  A quiet Louvre heist? I asked—reader Steve Hamlin wrote: Beverly, Re: Romney’s IRA contributions, there was a WSJ article […]

Romney’s VERY Private Equity (with UPDATE)

By now there’s been a lot of discussion in the media about the Vanity Fair and Associated Press exposés of Romney’s and his wife’s offshore bank accounts, to the limited extent that information about them is publicly available.  Romney is now likening overseas bank accounts and shell/money-laundering corporations to investing in real overseas companies—as if […]