Trump's Business Acumen

Sailor said:
The only one getting shredded here lady is you and your faux intelligence. I am surprised with all this data that Mueller has not brought Trump up on anything
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Why would that surprise you. The Justice Department has taken the official position that a sitting president can't be indicted. Mueller is compiling a case against him, but I wouldn't expect that he'll actually bring charges. In theory, it's up to the Congress to impeach, once it's been showed he committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Sadly, the GOP lack the integrity for that.
 
Oneuli said:
In the wake of the New York Times's revelations about just how much of his father's money Trump got, I think it's worth revisiting the issue of how much business skill Trump actually had.

The myth of Trump is fairly simple: he took a loan from his father of $1 million, and grew it into a business worth many billions of dollars, thanks to his brilliant investments.

Even before the extent of Fred's handouts to his son were clear, the legend of Donald's business sense never added up, mathematically. For example, between 1982 and 2018, Forbes says his net worth grew from $100 million to $3.1 billion:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/trump-forbes-400-spot-tumbles-as-net-worth-declines.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=axK-7t8kolQC&pg=PT103&lpg=PT103&dq=forbes+1982+donald+trump+%22estimated+at+over+$200+million%22+++%22$500+million%22&source=bl&ots=hjx0KOH1FK&sig=uOeUSFijHsEnX50eQWEatW9_cso&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMI2KHPtL7YxgIV1BGSCh2NvADr#v=onepage&q=forbes%201982%20donald%20trump%20%22estimated%20at%20over%20%24200%20million%22%20%20%20%22%24500%20million%22&f=false

That would be an annualized return on his fortune, in that timeframe, of 10.0%. Over the same period, any moron with a passively managed index fund would have gotten 11.827%:

https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

So, a completely mediocre investor, starting where Trump did in 1982, should be worth about $5.6 billion today, which is 81% higher than Donald Trump.

Now that we realize just how much Trump got in hand-outs from his father, it looks even worse. According to the NYT article, these contributions from his mega-rich father's business added up at least $413 million in value, in today's money. There are lots of questions about the legality of these transfers, which were done by way of shifty schemes of giving deliberately under-valued gifts, to avoid paying taxes. But I'd like to set those aside and just look at it in terms of how this reflects on Trump's investing skill.

According to the NYT article, Trump was being transferred $200,000 per year from his father's fortune starting as a toddler, such that by age 8 he was a worth at least $1 million.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-wealth-fred-trump.html

Projecting forward $200k per year in transfers from age 3 to 18 and a reasonable return on the trust fund investments, Trump should have been worth well over $10 million at age 18. Yet, that would "only" involve a transfer of $26.4 million from daddy to Donnie, in today's dollars ($200k per year, each adjusted by inflation to 2018 dollars). The NYT says he eventually got a total of $413 million in today's money from his father. So, he'd have had to average a transfer of $3.054 million per year, in nominal dollars, if distributed evenly, from age 18 until his father's death in 1999, to hit that lifetime total of $413 million in today's dollars.

So, based on an assumption of $200k per year from his father from age 3 to 18, followed by $3.054 million per year after that, until his father's death, what would Donald Trump be worth today if he'd just put his daddy's financial gifts into a passively managed index fund, and never did a day of active investing or other work in his life? In other words, if Donald Trump has been born severely retarded, and Fred had made all the same wealth transfers to him but without letting him play with the money, what would Donald be worth today?

The answer: $11.725 billion. The real Donald Trump, "brilliant businessman," is worth about 1/4 as much as the hypothetical Donald Trump who'd been born so mentally deficient that he couldn't be trusted make any decisions about the money, or even to get a job. That makes the real Donald Trump a shockingly terrible investor. Yet the mythology about his business skill was (aside from the racism, sexism, etc.) the very core of his sales pitch when he ran for president.
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Aside from daddy's taxpayer funded empire, trump also defaulted on almost $1 billion in personal debt when his real estate empire was crumbling around him.
 
Oneuli said:
Why would that surprise you. The Justice Department has taken the official position that a sitting president can't be indicted. Mueller is compiling a case against him, but I wouldn't expect that he'll actually bring charges. In theory, it's up to the Congress to impeach, once it's been showed he committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Sadly, the GOP lack the integrity for that.
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Sounds like you caved and backed away from your "facts". Thanks.
 
hvilleherb said:
Democrats just don't understand business. Trump was even able to overcome obstacles when local banks started blackballing him. He was able to find new investors willing to partner with him without a problem.
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LMAO. Why did 'local' banks blackball him?

LMAO.
 
Althea said:
LMAO. Why did 'local' banks blackball him?

LMAO.
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Trump does not pay his bills. He cheats everyone who deals with him. He has a hard time getting a lawyer because his reputation precedes him. Right and wrong are not concepts that trump deals with. The bankers were not going to lose more money on his crazy investing and wasteful spending.
 
Sailor said:
The usual childish rant when Gomer is beat again. Yawn.
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I can't fix your massive stupidity and willful ignorance, turdlicker. That's on you.

It's highly amusing watching you deny the facts that have just been published regarding Trump's total incompetence.

Watching you embarrass yourself on a constant basis is good for a smile and a chuckle. Keep going, idiot.
 
Oneuli said:
The boom that started June of 2009? That would be pretty weird to give Trump credit for, wouldn't it? Or do you mean some other boom? If so, I'd need you to be more specific before I could weigh in on whether Trump should get credit. The boom in the federal deficit? Yes, that's largely attributable to him and I don't want to deny him any credit for it.



Yes. And here in the US, the same conservative economic know-nothings tried to push the same austerity measures. If we'd had a worse president, they might have succeeded. But Obama partly held the line against that Republican mania, and spared us the worst of the self-inflicted wounds other wealthy nations were causing themselves.



Are you referring to the continuation of the Obama era growth?



One thing I need to remind right-wingers about occasionally is that it's best if we build our arguments on this reality, rather than the alternate one that only exists on Fox News. On Fox News, of course, the annual GDP growth rate never got close to 3% during the Obama years. That would be a lie. As recently as 2015, the rate was 2.9%, which is as close as you can get without actually hitting it.



Our military hasn't been hollowed out, it's been obscenely bloated. It's far and away the most over-funded military in the history of the world. No other nation in history has ever spent as much, relative to its contemporaneous rivals, as the US does. Based on 2017 IISS numbers, we could cut our military budget in half and still outspend Russia and China combined by an enormous margin.
The deficit declined dramatically on Obama's watch.
Not so far. So far, it was up 2.2% in Q1 and 4.1% for Q2, meaning we're on pace for below-average annual growth, relative to the historical averages during the modern era. Presumably with the vast amount of deficit spending we're doing now, the balance of the year will be decent, but nothing special in historical terms, and we will have piled up a ton of debt to finance it.
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ya. I missed that one year. I forgot the revision up from 2.6.
The following year it was 1.7% -that was the anemic lead in year for Trump.
Which makes Trump's numbers even more impressive. by all estimates we should hit 3% this year

There are a couple Obama years below even 2%. As i stated Obama grew jobs, but not good paying jobs.
Trump has increased manufacturing jobs close to 500k.
You know? those good paying jobs that Obama said "were not coming back"

Wait till we finally renegotiate trade barriers with China -like we just did with NAFTA 2.
You'll see more jobs, and much less Chinese IP theft. Like the requirements for sharing IP with Chinese joint ventures to do business there.
~~~

The fact we had to literally scrounge spare parts for pilots, and we were losing good personnel to the private sector shows how hollowed out our military was.

Air Force losing pilots and planes to cuts, scrounging for spare parts
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wi...and-planes-to-cuts-scrounging-for-spare-parts
Today, many in the Air Force are questioning whether a similar mission could still be accomplished, after years of budget cuts that have taken an undeniable toll. The U.S. Air Force is now short 4,000 airmen to maintain its fleet, short 700 pilots to fly them and short vital spare parts necessary to keep their jets in the air. The shortage is so dire that some have even been forced to scrounge for parts in a remote desert scrapheap known as “The Boneyard.”
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I don't take you seriously when discussing military prowess, or power projection.
I'm not sure if you understand just how quickly China is growing their military - and they aren't doing it for any reason then their known global hegemony.
 
Oneuli said:
As you're well aware, the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. Trump's son, son-in-law, and campaign chair all secretly met with known agents of the Russian government for the express purpose of getting assistance from Putin's regime against their opponent. That's collusion.
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I don't think they were "known agents" - regardless they were not meeting to "get assistance"
there was no promise of a conspiracy to work together.

There was only the promise that da Russians had dirt on Hillary. That was the sole stated purpose of the meeting.
There was no quid pro quo designs from the meeting to works towards a corrupt goal either..
there was only a meeting that was aborted early

Taking a meeting is simply not collusion/conspiracy
 
domer76 said:
I can't fix your massive stupidity and willful ignorance, turdlicker. That's on you.

It's highly amusing watching you deny the facts that have just been published regarding Trump's total incompetence.

Watching you embarrass yourself on a constant basis is good for a smile and a chuckle. Keep going, idiot.
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There is a reason you still sit at the kids table Gomer, and it is not only because of your obvious stunted growth.
 
Nordberg said:
Trump does not pay his bills. He cheats everyone who deals with him. He has a hard time getting a lawyer because his reputation precedes him. Right and wrong are not concepts that trump deals with. The bankers were not going to lose more money on his crazy investing and wasteful spending.
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Indeed. Which is why I got such a good laugh out of HV's post. That doesn't even take into account the numerous small businesses that he refused to pay.
 
I'll approach this a different way and come to exactly the same conclusion.

I dare anyone here to post to a podcast or anything every wherein Trump dazzles you with his finance, banking, real estate acquisition/syndication,
development acumen. Please. I dare you. I have not even heard him appear mildly informed about ANYTHING.

You might think at some point, some erudition would have floated out of his piehole at some point even if by accident.
He doesn't even speak the language of finance, economics or banking.

So, no, to the OP. He is patently lacking in business "skill" He is just a rich guy. Those are two different things.
 
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