While Obama criticizes Romney for outsourcing jobs and making money overseas, the President has failed to mention his own investments in companies that outsource American jobs. After looking at the President’s most recent financial disclosure from 2011, Jim Lindgren reports:
Yet in the three tax years in which Barack Obama has been President (2009, 2010, and 2011), fully 30.1% of the Obamas’ gross income has come from foreign sources: ($2,711,340 out of a 3-year total gross income of $8,993,449).
Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner writes:
"Obama and his wife reported having between $200,000 and $450,000 in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, which invests in the largest U.S. corporations. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as of Sept. 30, 2011, the fund’s biggest holding was 8,272,039 shares of Apple Inc., then valued at $3.2 billion."
The Vanguard 500 Index Fund also has "94,582,281 million shares of General Electric, valued at $1.4 billion" and "10,655,961 shares of International Business Machines [IBM], valued at $1.9 billion."
All three of these corporations have been accused of shipping American jobs overseas, with the New York Times saying G.E. in 1989 "became the first U.S. company to outsource software work to India." As for IBM, in 2009 the Wall Street Journal found, "Foreign workers accounted for 71% of Big Blue’s nearly 400,000 employees at the start of the year."