Art of the loss — what blowing a billion tells us about Trump
 

I posted this because Dangles always appreciates information about Deranged Donald other than Faux

By Paul Brandus in Marketwatch
Published: May 8, 2019 9:09 a.m. ET


I’ll bet that few of President Trump’s supporters will actually read the article in The New York Times outlining just how he was able to blow $1.17 billion between 1985 and 1994. They won’t either out of antipathy towards that paper, or because the article’s too long, or because they’re so in the tank for Trump that they think he walks on water, is more honest than Mother Teresa and all the rest—and anyone who says anything that doesn’t validate this world view is automatically a far left stooge.

But they might learn something, because the disclosures rip a Titanic-sized gash in the myth Trump has spent a lifetime peddling, namely that he’s a big-brained, super deal-making genius. I mean, you don’t have to be a Trump University grad to know that losing $1.17 billion in ten years isn’t exactly the definition of success.

But that’s what Trump did, we now know, thanks to reporting by the dogged Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, who obtained tax data (but not actual returns) for that period—giving Americans the most detailed look ever at the financial dealings and shenanigans of the man who now sits in the Oval Office.

What’s interesting here is that even with one mild recession, the overall period in question—1985 to 1994—was a boom time for the U.S. economy. GDP grew 43%, and the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 SPX, +0.31% , grew 171%—not counting dividends.

If you parked cash in an index fund on New Year’s Day 1985 and went away for a decade, you would have done quite well. Yet Trump was blowing through cash, even at his flashy Atlantic City casinos. How anyone could lose money in a casino in the 1980s—when the only options were Nevada or New Jersey—is beyond me. Trump’s lack of a Midas touch was also evident at everything from a failed airline to a football team in a league that thought it could actually compete with the NFL.

The Times’s reporting adds important context to other stories that have been written about Trump in recent years. David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post—another great newspaper Trump loves to bash—won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for exposing Trump as a charity-stiffing charlatan. Buettner and Craig report that one possible reason for this is that because Trump’s adjusted gross income was in the red for each of the ten years (again 1985-1994), “he was not allowed to deduct any charitable contributions.”


The problem here—and a reflection of Trump’s phoniness and shameless self-aggrandizement—is that this didn’t stop him from pretending to be a big donor to charitable causes. He got his photo in the New York papers a lot by showing up at events to benefit charities he never gave a dime to.

It’s hard to get much slimier than this, though I think Trump managed to top himself in later years by cheating on his third wife with a porn star and then paying her off to the tune of $130,000 (think of how that could have helped a worthy charity).

Trump’s gusher of red ink may also help explain his reputation for cheating the very people who worked for him. A sweeping investigation by USA Today in 2016 revealed that Trump, over the last three decades, has been the target of some 3,500 lawsuits by employees and contractors over alleged non-payment. The paper notes that many of the people who sued Trump were hard-working blue-collar types like dishwashers, painters and waiters—the very kind of “small guys” that candidate Trump claimed he was always looking out for. The president’s alleged cheating continues to the present: Trump has been hit with at least $5 million in unpaid liens by workers at his lavish new hotel here in Washington—just five blocks from the White House.

To square the circle, Trump’s history of financial incompetence and alleged swindling also helps explain how he eventually got into bed with the Russians. In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union had collapsed (I was working in Moscow at the time), and there was a lawless, Wild West free for all as Russians grabbed whatever assets they could (sidebar: there are 71 billionaires in Moscow alone today, Forbes reports). Many Russians needed to launder cash; Trump needed cash. It was a marriage made in heaven. For decades, “at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties,” the Washington Post has reported. Trump may be off the hook on colluding with the Russians during the 2016 campaign, but his collusion with dirty Russian money is beyond question.

The commercial real estate market completely collapsed, and there was a major recession. Did the Times article mention those things, or did they lay 100% of the blame on him? I'm not saying he's Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. I'm saying there were enormous challenges to real estate investors in that timeframe. That's what caused the S&L collapse, even insurance companies went under because they had invested their reserves in commercial real estate.

In 1982 Trump got himself on the Forbes list at 100 million, though he is believed to have been worth 5 million.
Somehow you believe that he magically grew that 5 million into a billion in a few years, he really would have to be a magician to do that.
What I understand is that he wrote off his lenders losses on his tax returns, he's nothing like Buffet or Gates more like Leona Helmsley.
Her famous quote is "We don't pay taxes, only little people pay taxes"

The NYT has more coming, there's a reason why his nickname in the NY real estate world was Don the Con.

The scariest part of Don the Con is where his capital came from after his "BILLION" dollar loss.

Donald Trump Jr. himself famously said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

And golf courses, as reported by Golf writer James Dodson to have happened in 2014: “So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”

Funny, Trump's explanation was that he's a genius at exploiting tax loopholes and it's all a game.

i’m not magically believing anything, i have no idea what his net worth is/was at different times.
i don’t know if he’s actually skilled, or if it’s all a con. i assume the truth is a bit of both, not all one or the other.

s
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losing money, and how he did the accounting, are not the same thing. and obviously he didn’t do the accounting himself regardless of what he says.
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And you wonder why Trump has his tail between his legs anytime he's around Russians. At least there's no chance it could influence his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.

so it’s not possible to
do business with russian venture capitalists, and then be potus? how
many millions did the clinton foundation take from russia, that doesn’t worry you?
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Haha
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Love the replays of Trump boasting everything he touches turns to gold, all while loosing billions. You really have to be bad in business to loose money in a casino, he is a legend in is own mind. He has mastered the art on the con, we are living it.
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The emperor wears no clothes.
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How much?
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russia gave $145 million to the foundation, and by an amazing coincidence, secstate clinton saw russia get the Uranium One deal. nothing to see.
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Please read up.
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What he went but Hillary say it isn’t so😂
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is it relevant?

Spence said Trumps ability to be potus is suspicious, because he had dealings with the russians. well if he didn’t care that hilary did the same, why isnt point valid?


What’s good for the goose...

Spence has no issue with Hilary dealing with Russians and still
being fit to be president. So why can’t Trump do the same thing?

Got Stripers, why is
my question not valid? i shouldn’t point out an
obvious, glaring double standard?


,
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Oh.... so that was it.... :rolleyes:

Yeah funny stuff
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Spence, can
you tell us when, exactly, doing business with Russians, made it impossible for one to be POTUS because of the conflict of interest? Explain why it’s no big deal that Trump did business with them, but no biggie when Hilary accepted a $145 million donation to her foundation. Enlighten me.

To my simpletons eye, it appears as if you are applying one standard to Trump, and another standard to Hilary. Am i wrong?

You really backed yourself into a corner here.
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Amazing to me that for someone who contends he really dislikes Trump, you seem to be loosing sleep over ways to defend his actions in each and every thread and now even the screwing he gave everyone doing business with him in the past; include the US government and all us honest tax payers.
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The title of this post is what the loss tells us about Trump.

It tells us that he's far, far, far from being as flawless as he says he is. It tells us he made some bad decisions at the wrong time (real estate market absolutely collapsed at the time). It was not a good time to be highly leveraged (as I assume he was) in the commercial real estate business. I know that Aetna, who I worked for after this period, lost well over $1.5 billion in real estate investments, that was exactly why Aetna sold half its business to Travelers in 1995. It was a major, major recession, and not everyone who got slammed was stupid or evil.

It also tells us very clearly, that if you keep trying, you can overcome loss and get back ahead. I don't know how he did it, I don't know if he cut corners or screwed people. I wouldn't bet my life against it, he's very capable of that.

This is not breaking news, it was fairly widely reported back then, that he was billions in the hole.

Do you judge a businessman on his worst years only? Or on his whole career?

The stock market went down Tuesday. Does that mean we're in the middle of a crash? Or was it one setback on a long road?

I lose no sleep. You think this is hard? Takes no effort to insert a little honesty and fairness into a good liberal rant.

When the best your side can do, is claim that surveillance isn't spying, it's time to ask some hard questions.

I'm not defending Trump, I'm defending honesty. I don't like what the left has done to the last 3 GOP presidential candidates, and every day they go deeper and deeper into the Twilight Zone. Look at the presidential candidates? That first debate with all of them, will look like the 'Cantina Scene' from the original Star Wars movie. An absolute freak show, each one trying to show that they hate conservatives more than the rest. That's the litmus test. Joe Biden is a clown, a walking gaffe machine. But on that stage, he will look like Eisenhower.

I don't defend him on every thread. When the criticism is accurate, I join in. See the medal of freedom thread. I only defend him against nonsensical babble (that's not quite what this thread is, but almost). It's totally fair to judge him on his failures, but we should also consider his successes. That's all I'm saying, it's what I always say, and if that's controversial to the liberals here like you, Pete, WDMSO and Spence, that probably says more about you than it does about me. I hated Obama, but gave him credit a million times for what he did with the economy and terrorism. That's what 'fairness' looks like. Try it sometime. It's a LOT easier than having to dismiss all the facts you don't happen to like. That's what's hard. And silly.

And it appears to me, that you join the criticism in every thread. So how are we different in that respect?

Respect and honesty are hard to come by when discussing Trump. I for one, am very tired of being lied to. Can he think I/we are that dumb not to see through his lies/twisting the truth to suit his agenda? China is going to pay for the tariffs he imposes.... Really? Americans will pay for the tariffs when they purchase those items off the shelves at Walmart... As for his losses, he even tweeted that it was considered "sport" to show a tax loss... Yeah, that is really someone I would circle the wagons for..... Not.

Was that a lie? Often, he can be refreshingly honest. More than most politicians.

Color the font blue doesn’t make it true🤮
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Nor does it make it false. Neither does your nice little poem. You could point out what is false . . . if you can.
Otherwise, it is presumed to be true.

No, not presumed.... That is your version of a political historical narrative, much of which is steeped in opinion. I don't need to revisit past administrations' spew in order to be disgusted in the current, crass, delivery the current POTUS chooses to throw at us as a nation. In a discussion, it is tough to make up vertical ground by simply dragging down the other side IMO.

I wasn't dragging any side down. Just pointing out that lying is a universal tool employed by the vast majority of politicians. My opinion about why, as I've observed in this forum, there is such a negative, and actually hateful, focus on what is supposed to be Trump's incessant lying is more about his style and the successfully negative image of him created by his opposition, including, especially including, the opposition media, as well as by those in his party that hate him.

I think that most of the hate against him is steeped in how he has been defined by those who hate him, or by those who simply have political motives. He wasn't despised by so many before he became President. He was even admired and adulated by many of those who denigrate him now.

Half the country doesn't see Trump the same way you do. And we aren't stupid, or deplorable, or phobia driven. A rational discussion, rather than angry name calling and emotional characterization would more easily help to make up vertical ground.

To compare the lying done by this administration to any past administrations is like comparing the commuting traffic you see in Athol mass to Boston. I suspect you might need to add the lies of all past presidents to equal Trumps body of lies.
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Lying is bad,lying a lot is bad.

Wow, that was easy.
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