COMMENT: How appro­pri­ate to find George W. Bush giv­ing speech­es for up to $100,000 a pop on how to invest out­side the Unit­ed States, and doing so in the Cay­man Islands no less.

Not only did Rom­ney have much of his per­son­al for­tune stashed in Cay­man Islands-based off­shore enti­ties in order to escape tax­es, but Rom­ney embod­ied the man­i­fest­ly failed eco­nom­ic doc­trines that Bush imple­ment­ed. 

The  role of  “off­shore” in the glob­al and U.S.  economies has been detailed by Lucy Komis­ar in a num­ber of our vis­its.  

“On Wall Street, a Lucra­tive Sec­ond Career Awaits For­mer Politi­cians” by Steven M. David­off; New York Times; 11/7/2012.

EXCERPT: . . . .Pres­i­dent Obama’s pre­de­ces­sor, George W. Bush, has large­ly stayed away from busi­ness ven­tures after leav­ing the White House. But he has tak­en to the speak­ers’ cir­cuit, where fees can run more than $100,000 a speech. Last week, the for­mer pres­i­dent gave a speech at the Ritz-Carl­ton on Grand Cay­man Island at the Cay­man Alter­na­tive Invest­ment Sum­mit. The speech was closed to jour­nal­ists and raised some eye­brows because the idea behind such a con­fer­ence was to pro­mote invest­ing out­side the Unit­ed States. . . .