UPDATE: This has apparently been diaried earlier today by HoundDog, burntpoptrtz and shevas01, but I think bears repeating.
Perhaps another reason that we will not ever be allowed a peek at the Romney's 2009 tax return is the obscene profit they took at the expense of the American taxpayer and the union worker as outlined in Greg Palast's new Nation article: Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza.
Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.
Greg Palast's article explains how hedge funds moved in on Delphi, a parts supplier for GM and Chrysler which was the old Delco division of GM that was spun off in 1999. It fell into bankruptcy, and then into the hands of the vulture capitalists, many of them Romney campaign contributors.
When the bailout was being negotiated, Delphi's new owners extorted money from GM and the Treasury by threatening to close GM down (by failure to supply parts) if the $350 million money wasn't immediately forthcoming. Directly and indirectly, according to Palast, Delphi received $12.9 billion from the government.
By the end of June 2009, with the bailout negotiations in full swing, the hedge funds, under Singer’s lead, used their bonds to buy up a controlling interest in Delphi’s stock. According to SEC filings, they paid, on average, an equivalent of only 67 cents per share.
Just two years later, in November 2011, the Singer syndicate took Delphi public at $22 a share, turning an eye-popping profit of more than 3,000 percent. Singer’s fund investors scored a gain of $904 million, all courtesy of the US taxpayer. But that’s not all. In the year since Delphi began trading publicly, its stock has soared 45 percent. Loeb’s gains so far for Third Point: $390 million. The gains for Silver Point, headed by two Goldman Sachs alums: $894 million. John Paulson’s fund, which has already sold half its holdings, has a $2.6 billion gain. And Singer’s funds and partners, combining what they’ve sold and what they hold, have $1.29 billion in profits, about forty-four times their original investment.
The Romney's invested in Delphi through Singer back when the stock was only worth 67 cents. It is estimated that their windfall was between 10.2 to 15.3 million dollars per million dollars of investment. Blind trust, my eye.
Meanwhile, the new Delphi owners got rid of the unions and trashed the employee pensions, eliminating the healthcare benefit. The next step was to blame Obama for the loss to the workers of their benefits.
This article is a must read and spread piece of financial investigative reporting.