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Used Cars & Sins of the Father
1/24/2012
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The Nash Metropolitan
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Platinum NO RATINGS 
Marvin,
Maybe My knowledge and understanding of American Politics is'nt as advanced as you are-But I still don't see what you are trying to prove through this Blogpost. George Romney might have generated some duds during his time heading the car company Nash-Kelvinator/American Motors;but he will be remembered more (rightly or wrongly) for turning around the automaker;which helped him become Governor of Michigan later on. So What am I missing here? Whether Mitt Romney really did learn anything or not from his Dad is again immateral in the greater scheme of things.After all,I don't think voters are least bit interested in whether/or not he learnt economics from his dad. Regards Ashish.  User Rank
Platinum NO RATINGS
I disagree. knowing someone's roots may help explain why they take the stands they do. I think it points to Mitt being a bigger risk taker than popularly believed. At any rate, you can not have too much information.
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Blogger
Re: I am not sure I understand the points made in this blogpost...
Noreen Seebacher 1/24/2012 1:25:38 PM NO RATINGS
It only matters if the son claims he learned his business and economic sense from his father, which Mitt has said on occassion.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
No doubt Mitt has given credit to his father, I think that would be expected. And no doubt he has done well for himself, I think that it's interesting to look at his fathers background for a different perspective on Mitt himself.
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Iron NO RATINGS While I understand the national security implications of looking into someone's background I think we would all have questions about our background if our families were explored for generations. We should concentrate on the candidate's ability to lead and his experience—our country doesn't have time for a third cousin once polygamist or claims that someone is not a citizen.  User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
Nice story Marvin thanks for taking us off the beaten path and into the Romney's automobile history.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
Mitt's dad gave birth to a pseudo car that offered false economy, a stolen brand and a copy cat bumper. A car with big claims but little horsepower to back them up. A car attempting to appeal to everyone that finally appealed to no one .
Mitt's dad also gave birth to a son...... User Rank
Platinum NO RATINGS
People in the 50's were generally much 'greener' than we give them credit for. Milk bottles were returned and recycled. Clothes were often washed by hand. (Including cloth diapers.) More food was grown in gardens or close to home and per-capita energy consuption was much less than it is today.
The exception to the 'green' trend may have been the cars. Big, heavy and fast. It wasn't until the 1980's following the gas shortages of the late 70's that GM and Ford started to make small cars. Does anybody remember the Chevette? I guess the quirky Nash Metropolitan was just 30 years ahead of it's time.  User Rank
Platinum NO RATINGS
I am most interested in Mr. Romney's IRA account. How can a guy accumulate 100M dollars in his IRA account? Is Mr. Romney a hidden Warren Buffett? Just assume Mr. Romney started to contribute to his IRA account at 1974 (when the IRA started), and fully contributed year after year:
1974-1981: $1500 * 8 = $12K 1982-2001: $2000 *20 = $40K 2002-2004: $3000 * 3 = $0.9K 2005-2007: $4000 * 3 = $1.2K 2008-2010: $5000 * 3 = $1.5K His total contribution of IRA will around $56K. To turn $56K to $100M over this period of time, you need an annual return above 25%. Either Mr. Romney is an investing genius who beats Mr. Buffett hands down, or he owns an explanation to our fellow citizens. User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
Maybe we should put him in charge of the national debt. Clearly he has a magic way of multipling money.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
If Mr. Romney make his IRA money in the honest way, I am on his side, period. If he made his money through some tax gimmicks or dubious offshore activities, I will stay away from this guy. First thing first, will Mr. Romney disclose all his IRA account information to the public? I am crossing my fingers and waiting.
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Blogger NO RATINGS
But what if some of that profit is linked to those investments in the Cayman Islands?
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Platinum NO RATINGS
In that case, I will vote mitt to be the governor of Cayman Islands, not the president of United States. :)
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Platinum NO RATINGS
The devil is in the details.......
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"Maybe we should put him in charge of the national debt. Clearly he has a magic way of multipling money."
Ha! good one. yes take a $1T of the Fed's money and put it into private-equity deals. They could do it even one better, the Fed could buy the products from the private-equity company so we could create some kind of new Federal ponzi scheme... kind of like what they did to the housing market.  User Rank
Platinum NO RATINGS
One of the funniest things I've heard said about Romney came from the Tea Bagger who stood up in Congress and called Obama a liar. This guy (dont care to mention him by name) was critisizing Romney's record as a private equity prince, saying that just because its legal and available in the capitalist system to buy other companies and strip them down for your own personal profit, doesn't mean it's right and doesn't mean you should do it.
The funny thing is, that is the leftist criticism of capitalism...that its free-wheeling, profits uber alles, "creative destruction" is many times "not right" and that it's the role of government to step in and make sure businesspeople don't step over that line (with child labor, workplace safety, product contamination, insider trading, etc.). So here you have this Tea Bagger crying out about Romney doing bad but legal things at Bain....but who was supposed to stop Romney and Bain from doing these things. Conscience? User Rank
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Broadway, I am NOT crying out because Mitt achieved greater investment return. I am crying out because how he can do it. Beating Warren Buffett for 38 years is not a simple task, if not mission impossible. Mr. Buffett has been the first or second richest man on this planet. If Mr. Romney can do so well in his IRA account by investing Bain, He shall have well deserved reputation in Private Equity world like KKR.
Unfortunately I did not even know Mitt before he became president candidate.  User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
In the hopeful possibility that you are simply making an honest error in using a disgusting (to me) term to reference Tea Party members, I am taking the time to point out that you have indeed done so. Google "tea bagger" if you are simply uninformed about its meaning.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
Fred, I am sorry you are offended by such a funny term. And yes, I know at least two meanings of "tea bag," one a noun and one a verb. I also find it funny that you choose to focus on that one phrase yet decline to address the obvious hypocrisy of certain Republican anti-Romney elements that attack his career in private-equity. I know several millionaire and billionaire private-equity princes who are cringing at the thought of anti-capitalist, populist Republicans coming to power, led by the perpetual bomb-thrower and ultimate hypocrite Newt Gingrich.
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Broadway. Here is what you said:
"One of the funniest things I've heard said about Romney came from the Tea Bagger who stood up in Congress and called Obama a liar." My response was to your use of a perjorative and disgusting (to me) term to refer to a person who called Obama a liar and alledgely also called Romney something or other which was not made clear in your rant. I had hoped, as I said in my response, that you were simply making an error and didn't know the meaning of the term, but apparently that was not the case. Your use of the term was completely extraneous to the point you were attempting to make, if indeed you had one. You apparently had nothing to add other than name calling as you can clearly see from your own sentence. You wished only to use the term to ridicule Tea Party members and made certain to use it a second time further into the screed. It is fine for you to present something of substance, but to simply use the opportunity as an excuse to hurl epithets is way beneath contempt and has no place on this or any other blog. If you do have some cogent criticism of Romney or Tea Party members I am happy to hear it, but if you simply want to denigrate one or both by calling them names, keep it to yourself or go elsewhere to spew. User Rank
Platinum NO RATINGS
My point, Fred -- and this will be the third time I've made it, so hopefully I can write clearly enough for you to grasp it this time -- was the hypocrisy of the Gingirch-Tea Party position. These are people who call for the "free market" and less government regulation, yet they are attacking perfectly legitimate and legal free market activities. My point is hardly original. Does that mean I shouldn't make that point on this forum, that I don't have the right to make that point? No. Does that mean I should have used different words to express my point? Perhaps. Do you need to lighten up? Yes.
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Blogger NO RATINGS
I never responded to your point, because I have no interest in it and you have no call on me to address it. You can say anything you wish on this or any forum, just conduct yourself in a civil manner when you do so. I addessed only your use of an inappropriate and perjorative term "Tea Bagger" to refer to Tea Party members.
Your choice of that language adds nothing to your comment except that it offends some people and for that you should simply apologize and move on. User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
Your arithmetic is correct, but there are other ways of increasing the value of an IRA. Probably the main method is to transfer the proceeds from a 401k account to an IRA. And of course, 401ks can have many millions of dollars in it while still following the rules.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
You are right, people can rollover 401k money to IRA account. But the 401K plan started much later (1987?) than the IRA. It also has a cap on the contribution.
2006 $15,000 2005 $14,000 2004 $13,000 2003 $12,000 2002 $11,000 2001 $10,500 2000 $10,500 1999 $10,000 1998 $10,000 1997 $ 9,500 1996 $ 9,500 1995 $ 9,240 1994 $ 9,240 1993 $ 8,994 1992 $ 8,728 1991 $ 8,475 1990 $ 7,979 1989 $ 7,627 1988 $ 7,313 1987 $ 7,000 Furthermore, I doubt Bain Capitol provided 401K in the 80s, or 90s, because the total 401K asset of Bain Capital this year is 6.9M, a far cry for the 100M IRA account. User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
Please read the following Value Hiker. There are many ways to increase an IRA without earning 25% annually. Romney and others have had many pensions over the years as they moved from job to job. There are also deferred compensation plans that end up in IRAs. Even I took a distribution from the UCLA pension when I left in 1973 and was able to maintain its tax sheltered status. There are plenty of things to criticize about each of the participants in government, I'm certain you will find something else.
******* Defined benefit plans — commonly referred to as traditional pension plans — have been offered in the workplace since the late nineteenth century. Unlike today's more common defined contribution plans, such as 401(k), 403(b), and profit-sharing plans, traditional pensions pay employees a specific monthly benefit at retirement — without any required yearly contribution or investment decisions on the employee's part. Taking the Money from a PensionWhen an employee retires, there are a number of ways pension benefits are disbursed to them. Most defined-benefit pension plans provide two types of payouts to the employees:
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Platinum NO RATINGS
Fred, thanks for the information. I understand you can roll over your pension to your IRA. Company prefers employees to take lump sum. but employee usually won't do it, because the lump sum is not a good deal. Only if your company is running into some serious trouble on funding the pension,(which happened quite a lot after 2008 financial crisis), you shall not rollover. Mitt is a smart guy, and he shall know it.
With $100M IRA, Mitt will definitely be the top 0.01% on retirement saving. By disclosing how he made it, Mitt can teach the 99.99% of US citizens how to accumulate a huge nesting egg. Another interesting piece of information is: our Congressional representives had a far better return on their investment than the general public, does it ring a bell?  http://insidertrading.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001034 User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
Thank you for that Value Hiker. I am as unhappy with Congress as you are. I understand that they have legislated in such a way that protects them and only them from being prosecuted for insider trading. It is a disgrace, and nothing short of "throwing the bums out" will satisfy me, and I make no distinction between the parties.
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Blogger NO RATINGS
By disclosing how he made it, Mitt can teach the 99.99% of US citizens how to accumulate a huge nesting egg.
That's pretty funny, @Value Hiker User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
I think this actually gets to a good point -- you have to make money to pay taxes. It's more important that we teach people to make money than haggle over who pays what after they made it!
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Platinum NO RATINGS
I welcome the opportunity to make enough money that paying my taxes really becomes an issue beyond an annoyance.
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Blogger NO RATINGS
I certainly want to thank you Marvin, for your in depth analysis of the credentials of Mitt Romney, and your attention to factors so important to our decision about who should lead us on for the next four years.
I wonder if you would be so kind as to direct me to a similar analysis that you have made about the president's credentials, after all he will be participating in the next election. Perhaps a discussion of his pastor, the Reverand Wright, or his friend, campaign worker and bomb maker Bill Ayers. These are only two of dozens of questions that have been raised but not answered. Like how did he do in school? Who paid for his house in Chicago? Why his brother is still living in a hut on $10 income. And, I'm certain you can find others that will hold our interest.  User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
Scathing.
I really enjoyed Achilles' Wheel, though. I love a good pun. User Rank
Iron NO RATINGS
Fred,
This is one of the greatest of Marvin's columns. He truly has risen to the heights. In answer to your question, I have unearthed no evidence that President Obama has ever even sat in a Hudson or a Packard, let alone driven one. Accordingly, as the owner of two Packards, and occasional driver of a Hudson Hornet (which really was a kick-a** car in its day) I offer myself as a candidate for president. Cheers, Ted. User Rank
Iron NO RATINGS
William Howard Taft was the first president to introduce automobiles to the White House garage. In Canada, it was the prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who brogught automobiles to the office of the PM. His wife, Lady Laurier, actually got a speeding ticket in Ottawa for going 25 miles per hour in her horseless carriage. She was an enthusiastic motorist.
My understanding is that President Taft got an appropriation for automobiles to relieve the horses of the strain of carrying about his 350 pounds. I have long been sympathetic to friends of animals. Now, there have been Lincolns, Cadillacs, Pierces, and Packards in the White House garage. I know of no Hudsons. But I can assure all of you that there has never been a Nash Metropolitan there. George Romney temporaily saved Rambler at the expense of Packard, Hudson, and Nash. I'd say on balance that his record was negative as an automobile executive. Eventually, American motors had to be sold to Renault. When that venture tanked, Chrysler bought what was left in order to acquire the Jeep brand, which I believe was bought by AMC after George Romney had departed the company (subject to correction by anyone who knows better). Chrysler then tanked twice -- the first time it was bought by Daimler-Benz AG, and after DBAG set it free the pieces were scooped up by Fiat, which owns it now. If anyone doesn't remember the joke back in the 1970s when one could still buy a new Fiat in the US, it was said that the name was the acronym for "Fix it again, Tony." User Rank
Platinum NO RATINGS
I'm not worried about what Romney or Newt or Paul paid in taxes. I am worried about what i'm going to have to pay in taxes and want to know exactly what they will do to lower it.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
I grew up in that area and remember Romney's "brainwashed" statement well.
It's intereresting to think that it was enough to tube a political career when you compare it to some of the outrageous things politicians rebound from these days.  User Rank
Silver NO RATINGS
LBJ famously quipped that, in Romney's case, all that would have been needed was a light rinse.
Like father, like son? User Rank
Blogger NO RATINGS
LOL. Inside and out...(I really hate that shoepolished hair.)
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Iron NO RATINGS
My age is showing. Can you give me some context for that brainwashing comment?
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Blogger NO RATINGS
Don't worry...you're not the only one who didn't know the backstory. But the Washington Post offers this handy history lesson:
Governor George W. Romney of Michigan was a leading contender for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination until September 4, 1967, when he told Detroit television newsman Lou Gordon that he had been "brainwashed" by American generals into supporting the Vietnam war effort while touring Southeast Asia in 1965. User Rank
Iron NO RATINGS
So this is what they mean about the compact cars during this era! It looks like a fridge but deffinitely one of the cutest ride you can drive. I think that time the dual cooling fan oe style for radiator does not exist yet coz the car has very small package.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
When I was growing up, the family next door had a turquoise and white Nash Metropolitan that their four teenage daughters took turns driving. To my young eyes, it was the cutest, most glamourous car in the world, kind of like a Barbie-mobile!
It's right out of central casting that it should have been greenlighted by George Romney, father of our modern-day Ken doll of a candidate. Perfect hair, perfect family, perfect business acumen...that's our Mitt! He's so retro that I have to say, even though I'm in the minority, I kinda like him in spite of myself. I find him refreshing in some sort of strange, throwback way. But then...full disclosure...I still REALLY like the Nash! You should have SEEN the turquoise model! User Rank
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But Street Smart you must admit: A man with that much money needs a better colorist. What's with the shoe polish on his head? I know he's not 40 years old. He doesn't have to try to make me THINK he is.
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Blogger NO RATINGS
What I really want to know is if anybody here ever drove a Gremlin?
I once crossed the country in a Renault Le Car. I was 19 years old. It was quite an adventure. The car broke down in Akron, Ohio. User Rank
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That is a strange looking car, Scott. I'd forgotten about that one.
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While we're talking about odd AMC models, remember the Pacer, so fat and bulbous it resembled an inverted fishbowl? Heavy, noisy and wide, it had almost none of the things you might wish for in a car.
.  User Rank
Iron NO RATINGS
I don't know if that looked better back in the day, but it looks ridiculous now.
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Iron NO RATINGS
I wonder why designers of that era seemed to like that boxy sloping hatchback design. And the Pacer width is still inexplicable.
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Platinum NO RATINGS
This trip down memory lane is proof positive that each AMC car model was zanier than the next! And, of course, @Noreen you found the prettiest Gremlin of all to showcase! Most of them were avocado green and rusting...
But my larger point (and speaking of larger, my step-father used to drive an AMC Ambassador which was so huge it was like putting the state of Rhode Island on wheels) is that I lament losing that roll-the-dice sense of innovation the car companies had back then. AMC was a distant third (hard to see why) in the auto market, and they had nothing to lose by issuing these wacky niche products. What a wonderful business climate that was! I miss it! Now, every car looks exactly alike. Whereas, if you were driving a Gremlin, you'd SURE be able to find it in a parking lot! The blogs and comments posted on Investor Uprising do not reflect the views of Investor Uprising, PRNewswire, or its sponsors. Investor Uprising, PRNewswire, and its sponsors do not assume responsibility for any comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose. |
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