Mitt Romney is fond of saying that Europe isn’t working, and that Obama gets his ideas from European Social Democrats. Well Mitt sure doesn’t put his money where his mouth is as his tax returns reveal that his various investments and trusts are making lot of money off of European companies. In addition to funds in the Cayman Islands, Romney has had investments in dozens of overseas companies and institutions.
In Europe, just a sampling of companies that Romney has had investments in:
British Sky Broadcasting
Deutsche Bourse AG
Vestas Wind Systems (clean energy company subsidized by the US govt)
National Bank of Greece
Nestle
Logitech Intl SA
Louis Vuitton
Nokia
Schulberger
Novo-Nordisk
TurkCell
I think someone in the news media might ask the Governor that if he thinks Europe is so bad, why does he have a lot of his money over there. Even if he says it’s a blind trust and that he’s not really making the decisions. He can certainly be asked his opinion of these investments given his distaste for everything European at the moment.
Romney’s investments are truly world wide, raging from the China Life Insurance company to Wal-Mart of Mexico. So another good question is to ask what percentage of his money he had invested in European companies, as opposed to those in Asia, and the America. Given how much he believes in America.
Also, Romney doesn’t seem to have a problem investing against the tenants of his religion as he’s been invested in Coca-Cola, and SAB Miller, the London based owner of Miller and Coors. Beer and Coca-Cola are verboten for Mormons. That would be like an orthodox Jew investing in Oscar Meyer. Talk about pious baloney.
In addition to Romney’s widely diversified investments, his tax returns lay out a significant part of his relationship to Goldman Sachs, which is troubling. Since he is a preferred client of the firm, and was certainly invited into their sweetheart deals, it would be interesting to know if he was the beneficiary of any sales of mortgaged backed securities, or of the government funded AIG insurance that cost the taxpayers some $122 Billion. Of course, he would have to release more years of tax returns to find that out, but there’s plenty of time for that. After all, Obama has 10 years worth on the web right now.
Either way it’s ridiculous, fraudulent, and an insult to American people for Romney to be talking about how much he detests the European way of doing things. It sure seems to be working for Mitt Romney, or at least his wallet.