MJ: Romney invested in Chinese Stocks that embezzled, partnered with Iran, & stole US trade secrets
Romney's Stake in Chinese Stocks
The GOP candidate invested in 10 Chinese companies recently—including ones that embezzled, partnered with Iran, and stole US trade secrets.
—By James West | Tue Oct. 9, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney rips President Obama's policy on China and talks tough against the rising global power. "We're going to crack down on China," he said at a recent event in Ohio. "They've stolen our jobs; that's gotta stop." But according to Romney's recent tax returns, between 2008-2011 Romney invested more than a half million dollars in the stocks of 10 Chinese companies—including firms that embezzled, partnered with Iran, and stole US intellectual property.
Through Romney's individual and family "blind" trusts—managed by his personal lawyer, R. Bradford Malt—the Romneys traded more than 25,000 shares in Chinese firms, including some based in Hong Kong. Some of these investments have previously been reported in the media and raised by the Obama campaign, but others have gone unnoticed. Overall, the stock investments netted the Romneys a profit of more than $90,000 in 2010 and 2011. (Some of the individual investments were losers.) While that sum is a pittance in light of the candidate's vast personal wealth, it represents a significant amount for ordinary working Americans. Romney has long invested in China, putting millions into Chinese firms back when he ran Bain Capital, as MoJo's DC bureau chief David Corn first exposed in several reports this summer.
Romney has said that he has no role in managing his personal investments; one of his aides told the Financial Times recently that Malt works "to make the investments in the blind trust conform to Governor Romney’s positions, and whenever it comes to his attention that there is something inconsistent, he ends the investment." But back in 1994 Romney himself said that blind trusts don't absolve an investor of responsibility: "The blind trust is an age old ruse, if you will, which is to say, you can always tell the blind trust what it can and cannot do. You give a blind trust rules."
Here are the investments in 10 Chinese companies revealed in tax returns for The W. Mitt Romney Blind Trust (2010 and 2011) and The Ann and Mitt Romney 1995 Family Trust (2010) and (2011):
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/romney-china-stock-investments
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Sounds like he's trying to get even - by using the full might of the US government. Yikes! Time to get out and work harder!No other Presidential nominee has done stuff like this.
This should be destroying Romney!
