but democrats are certainly having a field day with where some of romney's fortune is or was invested. >> this is a man who says president barack obama is out of touch. out of touch with the needs of the american people. this coming from a man who recently had a swiss bank account and millions of dollars invested in the grand cayman islands beyond scrutiny. and the president obama is out of touch? >> that was just part of a democratic tidal wave. >> when he put his money in swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up the secret company, the shell company in bermuda. >> want to answer any questions about why he opened a corporation offshore in bermuda, why he keeps his financialses offshore in the cayman islands. why he had a swiss bank account. >> did you ever think you'd have a nominee of a major political party running for president who has significant investments in the cayman islands? >> americans need to ask themselves, why does an american businessman need a swiss bank account and secretive investments like that. >> this is a guy whose slogan is believe in america. and it should be business in bermuda. >> bermuda refers to one of a series of hedge funds operated by bain capital, mr. romney's former company. we know about it from the solo complete tax return he made public, a tax return from 2010. he's also put out an estimated tax return from 2011 but he didn't want to release anymore. we should point out he's not legally required to at all. no candidate is. he kept his taxes private in 1994 when he ran for the senate. during his run for governor and during his 2008 presidential campaign. this time, though, under pressure from republican primary opponents, he did this limited disclosure. the returns and other campaign filings revealed those overseas investments which are detailed in this month's "vanity fair" magazine. the article, the title, "where the money lives." the article says mr. romney has a personal stake in at least a dozen cayman companies worth as much as $30 million. in addition "vanity fair" and the associated press detailed that hedge fund, the one established in bermuda, that managed more than $100 million. for his part, mr. romney himself has said he pays all the law demands in terms of taxes and not a penny more, same as anybody. his investments he says are in a blind trust. >> my investments have been held by a blind trust, have been managed by a trustee. i don't manage them. don't even know where they are. that trustee follows all u.s. laws, all the taxes are paid as appropriate, all have been reported to the government. there's nothing hidden there. >> keeping him honest, experts say there's no real way to know that precisely or know how precisely some of these investments work without more data. which the candidate obviously is not supply ing. when asked today whether mr. romney should release his tax returns meaning more than 200 and 2011, congressman jason shay fets, a republican, said he already has. governor romney has been very successful, the congressman said, get over it. joining me now is the author who wrote that "vanity fair" piece. he also wrote "treasure island, off shore banking and tax havens." you say in your article mitt romney pushes into what you call some fuzzy gray zones. what do you mean by that? >> well, at the end of the day, it has been an article of faith and repeated by the romney campaign many times that mitt romney may have been something of a financial gymnast, doing all sorts of back flips to avoid taxes, but he's never actually broken the law. in my article, i kind of question that. is that actually true? and the answer to that question is not completely straight forward. i don't find, you know, examples of outright tax evasion which is by definition illegal. but at the end of the day, between the poles of tax evasion, illegal tax evasion and tax avoidance, there is a gray area. and especially when you start dealing with offshore tax havens, quite a large gray area. financial players and various other players go into this gray area. it's often an area where you can make a lot of money. >> kevin madden told fox news sunday that romney hasn't paid a penny less in taxes by virtue of where these funds are domiciled. his liability is exactly the same as if he held them directly in the u.s. as a u.s. citizen, he is accountable for u.s. taxes. some investments in foreign countries can be tax havens. but mitt romney does not hold any such investments. is all that accurate according to your reporting? can you say that definitively? >> well, no, not quite. this claim that, you know, he pays exactly the same taxes as if he'd invested in the united states, his investments through the cayman islands, exactly the same tax rate, it's not quite true. or at least it appears not to be. again this is one of the questions where we don't have clarity but there are strong indications. but on your earlier point about, you know, saying -- it has been said by the romney campaign and others that these are not tax havens. we're not investing through tax havens. that is something that has been repeated. that is something i've seen, you know, i've been researching tax havens for many years and it's one of the commonest things in places like the cayman islands, switzerland, all sorts of traditional well-named tax havens. routinely, we are not a tax haven, we are a responsible international financial center, all this. these places are tax havens. when you hear them say that, that is simply not true, these are tax havens. >> when the romney adviser yesterday said he doesn't have foreign accounts, he has foreign investments, assuming the swiss account is no longer active, is that true? that he doesn't have foreign accounts, he just has foreign investments? >> it is generally foreign investments, yes. yeah. that's the -- that's right. >> so bottom line when it comes down to it, to you, does it look like romney's done anything illegal here or is he just a savvy businessman taking advantage of loopholes or less than an airtight system? >> well, again, the question comes back to these gray areas. more often than not, though, these gray areas stay gray. romney has definitely been very comfortable in these areas. you know, not -- in most cases getting to the edges of the law, the fuzzy edges of the law and stepping around those areas. he seems very confident in going into these areas. there does seem to be a pattern. >> do we know why he invested in the cayman islands? is there any reason to invest in the cayman islands other than a tax advantage? >> generally you would -- if it's private equity companies, it would generally be a tax advantage, yes, that would be the reason. the cayman islands does have a very strong secrecy. it has a law, confidential relationships protection law. under which you can go to jail for -- not just for revealing information but for asking for it. but i think fundamentally, if mitt romney has been having, you know, routine investments through the cayman islands, i think fundamentally it is about tax. it is about helping -- not only helping yourself potentially avoid tax but also attracting foreign money that could be tax evading money. it could be just tax avoiding money. we don't know. >> nicholas saction, appreciate your reporting. thank you. >> thanks. >> let's dig deeper into this with republican strategist mary matalin and chief business correspondent ali velshi. i spoke to them earlier. ali, what do you make of this? beyond some potential tax advantages or privacy advantages, is there any legitimate reason to have investments in the cayman islands? >> i've been making phone calls on this. i've been trying to investigate. generally speaking not. there are legitimate reasons why you would have offshore accounts, offshore investments and blind trusts. none seem to suit the profile of a guy like mitt romney. now can't not declare your holdings. you can't not declare your income. it does seem to be that when he established these things, being rich wasn't sort of public enemy number one in america. this is probably the worst time to have to disclose all this money he's got. so they're trying to keep this under the radar. now it's floating above the radar. no valid reason. no savings of money or tax. >> it's not just floating above the radar. the obama campaign is trying to paint mitt romney as a ruthless rich guy who's got something to hide. the romney campaign is saying, look, we don't have anything to hide. if that's true and it certainly seems to be, why not just release more tax returns and short circuit the obama attack? >> well, first, let's make it clear that there is no legal requirement. there's possibly, possibly, a political requirement. but i would -- my opinion is it would be very, very bad politics for mitt romney to do this. the obama strategy, which they've made very clear is their strategy, is just to attack, attack, attack. but what they're also trying to do is just make a distraction. to the extent that romney says anything other than, yes, i've been a success, you can be a success in america. he should stay on his message, which is to say, as long as obama's president, your chances of becoming a success in america are limited. so i think it's much ado about nothing. not to mention these trust funds are out of his control and have been for many decades. >> i tweeted this to people, saying, do you think it's relevant or not? some people said it's absolutely not relevant. it's coming off as an attack against success. certainly that's what a lot of republicans hope it's coming off as. there are others who say how a person invests their money or spends mare money tells about what kind of person that person is. if they're hedging bets against the u.s. dollar by investing overseas, people should know that. >> i think you'd be pretty stupid to not hedge against an american dollar in this obama economy. what tells more about a person -- and i would hope romney people could get this out somehow -- is not what he's paying in taxes, which is exponential. it's equivalent to the success that he's made. but what he contributes in charity. there's never been a candidate or a governor or anybody in public office that i know of that contributes the percentage of his income to charity and other foundations that he supports. that's unprecedented. that says more about -- >> you're talking about tithing through his church. >> i'm talking about -- well, which counts. i'm also talking about his other charitable contributions and foundations that he supports. and far exceeding any tax benefits that would accrue from them. that's what is the measure of a person to me. or one of the many measures of a person. >> right. >> what they pay in legal taxes says to me nothing. >> ali, the romney people are saying, look, he has paid absolutely all the taxes that he is legally expected to pay. there's no evidence that that is not true. is it -- i mean, is there any tax advantage really to having these overseas investments? you still have to pay the taxes. >> i would love to have an answer to that. but we don't know enough information to do so. the issue is there was a time -- and it was not -- it was as recently as 10 or 15 years ago when there were specific advantages to having these offshore accounts. usually there was secrecy, avoidance of certain types of taxes and avoidance of taxes in the united states. all of that stuff is now not legal. it may be some of these accounts are legacy. some of these holdings and investments are legacy investments. there are some reasons why you would do it. the reason it's not gained much traction is because it's complicated and a lot of us are not accountants. once we start talking about this, it'll be obvious it becomes more of a distraction than it needs to be. the best policy would be to come forward. if romney is hedging against the u.s. dollar, nothing illegal about that, you can actually do that with all your accounts in the united states. if you like to invest in swiss francs because you think they're more stable, you can do that in the united states. so there's no valid reason why this is happening. there's no valid reason why mitt romney isn't explaining why it's happening. in this economic environment, the concept, the idea of secrecy, starts to become a little bit hard to deal with. >> mary matalin, appreciate you being on. ali velshi as well, thanks. let us know what you think about this. we're talking about it right now on twitter. a closer look at the obama campaign strategy of talking about mitt romney, attacking mitt romney on his finances and how he ran bain capital, instead of talking about how mr. obama is running the economy. we'll talk about that ahead. >> announcer: meet mary. she loves to shop online with her debit card, and so does bill, an identity thief who stole mary's identity, took over her bank accounts and stole her hard-earned money. now meet jack. after 40 years, he finally saved enough to enjoy retirement. angie, the waitress at jack's favorite diner, is also enjoying his retirement. with just a little information, she's opened up a credit line, draining the equity in jack's home. unfortunately, millions of americans just like you learn all it may take is a little misplaced information to wreak havoc on your life. this is identity theft, and no one helps stop it better than lifelock. see, ordinary credit monitoring services tell you after your identity has been stolen. they may take up to 60 days to alert you-- too late for jack. lifelock has the most comprehensive identity theft protection available. if mary had lifelock's bank account alerts, she may have been notified in time to help stop it. if jack had lifelock's 24/7 proactive protection, he could have been alerted by phone or e-mail as soon as they noticed an attack on their network, before it was too late. lifelock has the most comprehensive identity theft protection available, guarding your social security number, your money, your credit, even the equity in your home. while identity theft can't be completely stopped, no one works harder to protect you than lifelock. you even get a $1 million service guarantee. that's security no one can beat. you have so much to protect and nothing to lose when you call lifelock right now and get 60 days of identity theft protection risk free-- that's right, 60 days risk free-- use promo code "not me". order now and get this document shredder to keep sensitive documents out of the wrong hands-- a $29 value, free. [click-click] [♪...] [ male announcer ] what if you had thermal night-vision goggles, like in a special ops mission? you'd spot movement, gather intelligence with minimal collateral damage. but rather than neutralizing enemies in their sleep, you'd be targeting stocks to trade. well, that's what trade architect's heat maps do. they make you a trading assassin. trade architect. td ameritrade's empowering web-based trading platform. trade commission-free for 60 days, and we'll throw in up to $600 when you open an account. let's look at some raw politics tonight. in washington, they call it pivoting. to you and me it's called changing the subject. candidates, elected officials in both parties, trying to shift the spotlight away from something damaging. something like lousy job less numbers to something else. the bad unemployment number came out at friday morning at 8:30. not long after and pretty much ever since the white house, the obama campaign and its surrogates have been trying to change the subject. they've been trying to change the subject to mitt romney's finances as you've already heard and especially to this. >> his company that he started were called the pioneers of business outsourcing. the pioneers of outsourcing. >> newly published documents show mitt romney's firms were pioneers at helping companies outsource their manufacturing. to countries including china. >> to give another incentive to companies to send jobs overseas. >> we've got a guy who believes and has been a pioneer in outsourcing jobs. >> mitt romney's not the solution, he's the problem. >> those are some shots from the very partisan playbook. now some nonpartisan analysis. senior political analyst david gergen and daily beast contributor patricia murphy. founder and editor of citizen jane politics. david, this attempt to pivot from a bad jobless report to a full-on attack on romney is clearly a concerted strategy from the democrats. is it working? >> hard to say, anderson. early indications were it might be working in some of the swing states. but now we have numbers that have come out on how much the obama campaign has spent on advertising in swing states like ohio. and the obama campaign has outspent the romney campaign about 3-1. even if you had the pac money, obama's still ahead. yet these anti-advertisements don't seem to have moved the needle. it's still a very, very tight race in ohio. >> patricia, some are saying obama's playing a mediocre hand pretty well. romney is playing a strong hand poorly, particularly on the economy. do you think that's a fair assessment? >> i don't know if that's a fair assessment. i would say the last week or so romney has played it very poorly. i don't think going on vacation at your lake compound in new hampshire is a great way to play off the economy. i do think when he went into colorado today really became much more aggressive, much more aggressive than we've seen him going after the president's record. going after the health care bill. asserting himself in the health care arena which he really had been backing away from. i think he's starting to do better. i think it's way too early to say how he's playing his hand. it didn't go great last week. it went a lot better today. >> the governor consistently does poll higher than the president when it comes to who voters trust to handle the economy. president polls pretty poorly on the economy in general. so, i mean, trying to shift the focus away from the current economic situation, though it's understandable, it's not necessarily going to change those numbers in favor of the president, is it? >> absolutely not, anderson. the underlying numbers -- and we'll have to watch these job numbers every month now right through -- until the election. the president has to get those numbers up. i think anything that shows less than 100,000 jobs a month is bad newsor the president. he gets up around 200,000 jobs a month, as he was a few months ago, that could be very, very good news for him. but that's the underlying essential. what i do think these attacks are doing, anderson, is raising questions about mitt romney's sort of finances. and i think it's going to increase the pressure on him to release more of his tax returns. >> james carville and stan greenberg formerly worked for president clinton, worried out loud that obama was going to get beat with his economic message that things are going to get better. should be focusing on how things are going to get better in the next four years, if in fact they are. do you think they have a point with that? >> i think they have a point. i think that's really the only place that the president can go. the last four years have been very, very difficult for a lot of people. even though it's better for some people, maybe the unemployment rate has come down a little bit. it's ticked down. a lot people are still struggling so much. so many people have dropped out of this economy. he really doesn't want to talk about that. you have to say, i know it doesn't feel good, but it's going to get better. i'm the person to do it. then you see the president pivoting immediately to mitt romney. that's what all these bain attacks are about. i know it hasn't been going great for anybody but you can't trust mitt romney to do it any better. he's going to offshore those jobs. if you look at what he'