You People

In an interview last week on ABC's Good Morning America, Ann Romney was asked about her husband's refusal to release more than one year of prior tax returns (note: Romney has released only one tax return, the 2012 return which will not be filed until October 15^th – and probably released 3 days before the election – hardly counts).  Mrs. Romney departed briefly from her soft demeanor that attaches easily to subjects like family and God.  Like a politician she ignored the point that not releasing the returns created a speculation of deception and instead addressed the presumed deception that the users of that information would engage in. 

As I was watching she also said something curious and telling which Robin Roberts chose not to address. Robin, were you just not listening?  Mrs. Romney said regarding the tax returns "…we’ve given all you people need to know…".  With the clamor for Mitt's taxes (he files separately from his wife - which of course means she has significant income of her own) from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, pundits of all persuasions, and, of course, ratings hungry media types, it brings into question just who “you people” are - the American people, perhaps? The use of that phrase was telling because of its ability to make the obvious…well, obvious.  It also highlights the lack of insight on the part of the Obama campaign on the true nature of their opponent.

The Obama campaign has been targeting Romney’s character through relentless attacks on his stewardship of the Bain Capital Corporation.  Living here in Virginia, a hot swing state, we get to see it all.  Obama’s people have rightly concluded that they want to (early on) successfully point out that, for those who think they have no good choices for President, the choice of Romney is decidedly worse.  The Obama guys are, however, making a critical mistake.  Willard Mitt Romney is, as far as I can see, not a bad person. He is a lot of things; rich, attractive, stiff, inarticulate, loving father and husband, and (fortunately) a lousy politician.  He is also quite adept at making money through business (as opposed to, say, professional talents, such as with LaBron James or Leonardo DiCaprio).  His ability to make money or, more precisely, raising money is what made him appear critical to the survival of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics in 2002.  Just what does all that mean?

I believe it means that Romney’s skill set is all wrong for a political leader, not that he is personally evil in some fashion, or that his inability to sing demands ridicule.  I worked in tax, finance, and banking for 31 years.  One thing I learned is that those who engage in exotic business finance do so by working the system to their advantage and by paying large sums of money to experts (firms really) who figure out the ways for them to do it.  Such expensive expert advice is simply an investment for those businessmen, without moral judgment, since the only relevant quantitative ethical value is profit.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but one should not shrink from or distort that it is what it is.  It is done with two major goals; first, to appreciate the market value of an investment and, second, to avoid taxes.

The fact that certain business people close down businesses to extract the most money out of the carcass,  or ship jobs to foreign locations to cut costs (even if only speculative costs), or engage in oddball investments (like derivatives or junk finance) which knowingly create risks that can bring down an entire financial system should not be surprising or unexpected.  Pursuing activities that skirt the edge of legality because legality has not been established is not immoral; it is simply the absence of morality.  It’s like making an ethical judgment about a disease – pointless.  The lack of morality occurs when we choose to take no action to cure the disease, or sell ineffective medicines as an effective cure.

Out of this comes a separation between those who understand strikingly complex finance (and profit from it) and everybody else. It might include Bermuda based companies or accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman’s.  This separation can, and usually does, lead to hubris and false grandeur.  That Mitt Romney believes he should be the President of you people has been justified in his own mind by the level of success he has attained through the accumulation of wealth that only we people with financial savvy can figure out how to do.  It would hardly be surprising that he might want to prove to his dead father (who being successful in manufacturing and possibly looked down on financial manipulation for profit) that Mitt is the kind of man who is clever enough to be President where his forthright and charismatic father was not.