On MSNBC talk show in pm, Romney has 105 million in an IRA! Is it possible?

[66 dmhlt]

3. Yes - tricky, but it's legal. AND only if you're RICH RICH RICH

(H)ow can his I.R.A. possibly contain up to $102 million...?

The Romneys won’t say, but Mark Maremont, writing in The Wall Street Journal, uncovered a likely explanation. When Bain Capital bought companies, it would create two classes of shares, named A and L. The A shares were risky common shares, to which they would assign a very low value. The L shares were preferred shares, paying a high dividend but with the payoff frozen, and most of the value was assigned to them. Bain employees would then put the exciting A shares in their I.R.A. accounts, where they grew tax-free. With all the risk of the deal, the A shares stood to gain a lot or collapse. But if the deal succeeded, the springing value could be stunning: Bain employees saw their A shares from one particularly fruitful deal grow 583-fold, 16 times faster than the underlying stock.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts