Auto Bailout
At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney's so-called "blind" trust. The union chief says, "The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue,” “It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.” “While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others,” King added. The Romneys' gigantic windfall was hidden inside an offshore corporation inside a Limited Partnership inside a trust which both concealed the gain and reduces taxes on it. The Romneys' windfall was originally exposed in Nation Magazine, Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza after a worldwide investigation by our crew at The Guardian, the Nation Institute and the Palast Investigative Fund. [Ed. - The full story of Romney and his "vulture fund" partners is in Palast's New York Times bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.] According to ethics law expert Dr. Craig Holman of Public Citizen, who advised on the complaint, Ann Romney does not have a federally-approved blind trust. An approved "blind" trust may not be used to hide a major investment which could be affected by Romney if he were to be elected President. Other groups joining the UAW and CREW include Public Citizen, the Service Employees International Union, Public Campaign, People for the American Way and The Social Equity Group. President Obama's approved trust, for example, contains only highly-diversified mutual funds on which Presidential action can have little effect. By contrast, the auto bail-out provided a windfall of over 4,000% on one single Romney investment. In 2009, Ann Romney partnered with her husband's key donor, billionaire Paul Singer, who secretly bought a controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM auto parts division. Singer's hedge fund, Elliott Management, threatened to cut off GM's supply of steering columns unless GM and the government's TARP auto bail-out fund provided Delphi with huge payments. While the US treasury complained this was "extortion," the hedge funds received, ultimately, $12.9 billion in taxpayer subsidies. As a result, the shares Singer and Romney bought for just 67 cents are today worth over $30, a 4,000% gain. Singer's hedge fund made a profit of $1.27 billion and the Romney's tens of millions. The UAW complaint calls for Romney to reveal exactly how much he made off Delphi - and continues to make. The Singer syndicate, once in control of Delphi, eliminated every single UAW job - 25,000 - and moved almost all auto parts production to Mexico and China where Delphi now employs 25,000 auto parts workers. Forensic Economist
Greg Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC
Television. His latest bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot
Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps contains a
comic book by Ted Rall and chapters by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
www.BallotBandits.org
The groups are calling for an investigation by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate Romney's alleged violation of the Ethics in Government Act, which requires presidential candidates to disclose their personal finances. The ethics complaint comes on the heels of an Oct. 17 article in The Nation, which alleged that Romney has hidden his personal gains of at least $15.3 million from the auto bailout. "He made his fortune off the misfortune of others," Bob King, president of the UAW, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. "Why should we have to find out from the media about this?" The Romney campaign could not be immediately reached for comment. The allegations are ironic given that Romney has been a staunch critic of the auto bailout. Romney called for the government to let the auto industry go bankrupt in an op-ed in The New York Times in 2008. The Romney campaign also released a misleading ad in October that implies Chrysler has moved production of Jeeps to China following the auto bailout. Romney and his wife allegedly made millions from the auto bailout through their investments in the hedge fund Elliott Management, which held a stake in the auto bailout recipient Delphi Automotive, according to The Nation. The return on this investment amounted to more than 3,000 percent, according to The Nation. That said, the magazine didn't say that Romney broke the law. From The Nation: In their 2011 and 2012 Federal Financial Disclosure filing, Ann Romney’s trust lists “more than $1 million” invested with Elliott. This is the description for all of her big investments—the minimal disclosure required by law. The UAW is holding a
press conference on the planned ethics complaint at 2 p.m.
on Thursday in Toledo, Ohio.
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