Financial Illiterates and Tightwads
By their tax returns ye shall know them.
When it comes to managing their money, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are two peas in a pod.
Neither has any savings or investments other than their home and each is a tightwad when it comes to charitable giving.
Obama’s 2004 joint tax return shows $207,647 in income and not a cent in interest, capital gain or dividend income. His 2004 U.S. Senate disclosures reported not a single family bank or checking account with a balance of $1000 or more.
Biden’s 2004 joint return shows $234,271 in income and an impressive $129 in interest income with no dividends or capital gains.
Lest you think that this is an odd year, both Obama and Biden reported income of more than $220,000 per year in 2001, 2002 and 2003.
So these two guys are going to skillfully manage the US economy out of a serious financial crisis, dealing with issues involving complex credit instruments when they lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t managed to accumulate any significant savings or investments when they were earning over 5 times the income of the average American household? (Median household income in 2004 was $43,389)
Maybe Obama and Biden didn’t have money for savings or investment because, being good liberals, they were dedicating a lot of their income to helping the poor. Forget that. In 2004, Obama’s tax return shows $2500 in charitable contributions (about 1%) and Biden shows $380 in charitable contributions.
HT to Hank Adler for an excellent analysis of the tax returns.
