PRINT
EMAIL
COMMENT
BUZZ UP
DIGG THIS
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON
NET WORTH: $10 million to $50 million
PORTFOLIO: Politically correct income investments.
In the hot-potato category, the leading Democratic candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, declared her well-diversified portfolio to be a political liability. In May 2007, Hillary and Bill Clinton directed that all their stocks be sold to distance themselves from owning pieces of drug, oil and defense companies that aides said might cause them awkward political moments.
The Clintons' stocks were in a blind trust that they'd held for more than 20 years. Such trusts hand off control of an investment portfolio to another person and hide information about what's in it from the candidate -- and everyone else. Politicians routinely use blind trusts to avoid conflicts of interest. But the U.S. Office of Government Ethics last spring demanded that the trusts of Clinton, Mitt Romney and John McCain be "unblinded" because they weren't set up according to the office's standards.
Too bad for the Clintons, because their financial advisers had secretly put together a great blue-chip portfolio. Worse, the Clintons had to pay "substantial amounts" in capital-gains taxes to liquidate it, according to a statement. The portfolio held lots of high-tech and new-economy stocks, such as Yahoo, Amazon.com and Nokia. But with whole industries verboten to liberal politicians, stocks such as Abbott Laboratories, Boeing, Chevron and Wal-Mart could have been problematic.
Hillary Clinton was once a director for Arkansas-based Wal-Mart when her husband was governor of the state. The senator from New York discussed her change in attitude toward the company at a candidates debate. In Wal-Mart's early days, Clinton explained, she admired the company for bringing low-cost products to rural areas. But now, as a corporate titan, its practices had raised "serious questions" about the responsibility of big business to provide health care and safe working conditions for employees.
Don't weep over the Clintons' finances. While they'll have to make do with Treasuries and cash for now, they have plenty. According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Clintons together have between $10 million and $50 million in assets. (The FEC lets candidates report assets within ranges, making precise tallies impossible.) The Clintons have also disclosed that the former president earned more than $10 million delivering speeches last year, collecting fees ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. And aside from her $165,200 salary as a U.S. senator, Hillary reported royalties of $350,000 from her book Living History, published in 2003.
Reprint Article
