Gawker's John Cook has posted 950 pages of financial documents related to Mitt Romney's investments during his time at Bain Capital, but the trick now is finding experts willing to read through them all and explain what they might mean. According Cook, the documents include "internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested." A great deal of Romney's wealth is tied up in investment vehicles built, created, and managed by the company he ran for 15 years.

The story doesn't offer much int he way of commentary, because Cook readily admits that he doesn't understand most of it — which is sort of the point. Bain and the people who invest with them make a point of creating multiple, complex legal structures in order lower tax liabilities, protect investments, and occasionally shield the actual sources of their money. It's unlikely that they or Romney did anything illegal, but as we've seen in the kerfuffle over Mitt's tax returns, it's difficult to know how the Romneys make their money or even how much of it they made.

For what it's worth, Fortune writer Dan Primack claims that he has already seen most of these files himself and that he "worked hard to get them" and has had them "for a while." However, he also says he never wrote about it because he "found nothing worth publishing" It will probably make for a short cycle of political commentary on all sides, but finance people (on Twitter at least) seem generally unimpressed. If you think you can make something out if it, however, you're free to give it a shot and help Gawker, LLC (a Cayman Islands-based corporation!) figure it all out.

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Dashiell Bennett