Friday, July 1, 2016

Wait—is the Trump presidential campaign just an over-elaborate bank heist?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/20/1539947/-Wait-is-the-Trump-presidential-campaign-just-an-over-elaborate-bank-heist
"This look back at Donald Trump's one attempt at managing a publicly traded company raises yet another question about the presumptive Republican nominee's sudden political ambitions: Could it be that Donald Trump's presidential campaign is just an elaborate bank heist? Trump was the chairman of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in Atlantic City from 1995 to 2009, his only outing as the head of a major public company. During that time, the company lost more than $1 billion, financial records show. He also was chief executive from 2000 to 2005, during which time share prices plunged from a high of $35 to as low as 17 cents. Trump may have helmed the company bearing his name to penny-stock status, but he himself did exceedingly well. He got $44 million in salary. He charged the company additional "fees" for his services. The company paid for the $2 million care and feeding of his personal jet, and so on, and so on. To say Trump has no remorse about the cratering of the company he helmed would be, if anything, an understatement: He expounded: “They say, ‘Why don’t you take the casinos public or something?’ You know, if you take them public, you make money on that. All I can say is I wasn’t representing the country. I wasn’t representing the banks. I wasn’t representing anybody but myself.” All right, so Trump created a public company and then charged it exuberantly for his every involvement. That's not terribly surprising. But the Washington Post piece hints at the serious possibility that the public company became a dumping ground for Trump's other debt: Trump offloaded his failing efforts onto the stockholders, while he himself basked in stockholder-provided cash and perks."