Tuesday, December 18, 2007

How Rich Are The Presidential Candidates?

How rich should a president be? asks a truly mundane Money magazine this week.
The magazine highlighted the individual salaries, investments and sources of income for several of the 2008 presidential candidates. We include it here, if only to revel in the hypocrisy:
John Edwards -- the most “populist” of all the candidates is worth about $55 million. Edwards made some nice coin suing doctors and hospitals before he entered politics, and then he launched a creepy alliance with Fortress Investment Group. It pays him about half a million a year to serve as a part-time consultant and manage about $20 million of his money.
Rudy Giuliani is worth over $52 million. Rudy collects several six-seven-figure salaries… one from a lobbying and security consulting company he launched in 2003, another from a Houston law firm, more from book deals and a healthy share from the 124 speeches he delivered in 2006, at $200,000 a pop.
Hillary Clinton’s total net worth: $35 million, mostly from book deals, law firm days and her husband’s outlandish speaking fees.
Mitt Romney has some to $250 million to play with! The humble Mormon candidate founded Bain Capital, a hedge fund.
McCain has about $40 million in the bank.
Obama, the “poorest” of the bunch, is still worth over a million bucks.
What, if anything, do these people know about the average American household… whose median income is about $48,000? Does it matter?
As usual, Ron Paul was left off the survey. A rag like Money would rather that he not exist at all. Our own efforts to find his net worth met with a dead end. But, we did find a government disclosure report that reveals his multi-million dollar portfolio. That man’s got gold fever.

No comments: