I should have included this in my initial post. But when we throw big numbers around, it's really easy to forget, or at least not appreciate, the "zeros" in all those numbers.

From their own website, Bain says they currently manage $65 billion of investor's funds. I explained earlier how part of Bain's profits is the "preferred carried interest" on their investments when the companies or assets are sold. Bain takes 20% of those gains (none of any losses, by the way), while their investors get 80%.

Another source of Bain's income is an annual fee for managing the invested funds. It's common in the leveraged equity business that such fee is 2%. That means that among the other fees Bain charges, they have annual management fee income of $1.3 billion. A lot of that is distributed to the 400 or so professionals at Bain as annual bonuses. But if only 10% of just that portion of Bain's income, nowhere near as much as the capital gains portion of their earnings by the way, then $130 million would "trickle down" to the owner of the company, Mitt Romney.

It's pretty easy to see how he can afford a million dollar horse for his wife and an elevator for his cars, isn't it? It's also easy to understand why he doesn't want to release his tax returns. I wouldn't either.

But he's going to have a tough time defending the newest argument from the Democrats--would Bain make an investment in a company with only two years of financial statements as it's due diligence? The answer is no, the standard is at least five years.

None of this will deem Romney any less qualified for the job as POTUS. Quite the contrary, they'll prove him to be a very smart man who is capable of understanding and dealing with the large numbers of the federal government. But his tax returns will absolutely place him in the upper reaches of the "top 1%". Even if unimportant, how will the public react? How will the Democrats use this information in attack ads? That all remains to be seen, I guess.