Re: Donald Trump's extensive real estate portfolio in New York City
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Make America great again!
()
Date: August 10, 2016 09:17PM
Ying Ko Wrote:
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> Trump, Lies, and Bankruptcy by Kevin D. Williamson
> February 16, 2016 1:00 PM
>
> A pattern emerges. Donald Trump is a habitual
> liar, and the thing about habitual liars is that
> they lie habitually. In a testy exchange with
> former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Trump insisted
> that he’d never gone bankrupt, and that claims
> to the contrary are a lie. That’s the Trump
> magic right there: Lying about your business
> history is one thing, lying that your critics are
> lying about it is another. Trump has a peculiar
> way of speaking about bankruptcy: He has a deep
> aversion to the word itself. He speaks of
> “putting a company into a chapter” without
> ever answering the implicit question: “Chapter
> of what? Moby-Dick?” The answer, of course, is
> the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, to which Trump has taken
> recourse at least four times over the course of
> his business career. The chapter in question is
> the famous Chapter 11, which applies to business
> bankruptcies. Trump proudly insists that he never
> has had recourse to Chapter 13, the personal
> bankruptcy code. This is his apparent
> justification for saying that he’s never been
> bankrupt. But of course one of the purposes of
> Chapter 11 bankruptcy is to keep men such as
> Donald Trump out of Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
> Trump’s first bankruptcy was in 1991 after he
> borrowed a stupidly irresponsible amount of money
> to finance that monument to excruciatingly bad
> taste known as the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic
> City. Trump is such a good manager that the
> casino’s slot machines began failing during its
> first week of business. Never one to let reality
> stand in the way of his confidence, Trump had
> financed the $1 billion project largely with junk
> bonds, which meant very high interest payments.
> Trump did not make enough money to meet his
> interest payment and so was forced into
> bankruptcy. His ownership of the casino was
> diluted, and he ended up having to give back 500
> slot machines to the company that had provided
> them.
>
> Trump himself was on the hook for nearly $1
> billion in the deal, according to the New York
> Times, a sum that exceeded his net worth. He was
> forced to sell a fair amount of his personal
> property, including a yacht, as well as the
> failing air-shuttle service he’d been attempting
> to launch for some time. As Boston bankruptcy
> attorney Ted Connolly put it, Trump used the
> bankruptcy proceedings to negotiate away his
> personal liabilities while leaving the business
> saddled with debt. Unsurprisingly, the casino
> endured further financial problems, including
> bankruptcy. Trump’s ownership stake was diluted
> steadily, and he eventually was removed from the
> board. By the time of the casino’s most recent
> bankruptcy — which is to say, the bankruptcy it
> currently operates in — Trump could plausibly
> say that it wasn’t really his business any more,
> in spite of the fact that his name and face are
> all over it.
>
> Trump’s second bankruptcy came with his
> acquisition of New York City’s Plaza Hotel. The
> great dealmaker did essentially the same thing
> with the Plaza that he had done with the Taj
> Mahal: He borrowed too much money, at rates he
> could not afford. And in much the same way that he
> has contemplated putting his abortion-loving
> sister on the Supreme Court, he made his
> then-wife, Ivana, president of the Plaza. Once
> again, Trump was unable to make his debt-service
> payments. Once again, he lost much of his
> ownership stake — 49 percent went to Citibank
> — and, once again, he found himself having to
> run for the doors as parties with deeper pockets
> and more managerial acumen took over to clean up
> his mess. In the case of the Plaza, that was CDL
> Hotels International, of Singapore, and Prince
> Walid bin Talal, of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi prince
> laments that he was twice forced to “bail out”
> Donald Trump, whom he describes as a “disgrace
> to the United States.”
> In 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, a
> holding company for various Trump properties
> including the Taj Mahal and a riverboat-gambling
> company in Gary, Ind., went into bankruptcy,
> having acquired $1.8 billion in debt while raising
> only $130 million through an initial public stock
> offering. Same story: Trump had borrowed too much
> money, at a rate he could not afford (15 percent,
> in fact, which lets you know how credit-worthy the
> market deems Trump to be), and once again he was
> obliged to give up most of his ownership stake.
> Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts was reorganized as
> Trump Entertainment Resorts . . . which promptly
> went bankrupt, filing for Chapter 11 protection in
> 2009. (That’s right: Trump, who wants to be
> president of these United States, was in
> bankruptcy that recently.) Too much debt at an
> interest rate that he couldn’t afford to pay?
> Check. Loss of ownership? Check. Trump and his
> daughter, Ivanka, both resigned from the board
> just before the bankruptcy filing, inviting unkind
> rodential-nautical metaphors. It is no wonder that
> he’s had his greatest success renting his name
> to Macy’s and pretending to run a business on
> television rather than actually running a
> business. So, those are the bankruptcies about
> which Donald Trump is lying. Trump also is lying
> about self-funding his campaign: Like any other
> politician, most of his money comes from donors.
> That famous fund-raising for veterans? The money
> is going into Trump’s personal foundation. Trump
> has repeatedly failed his business partners and
> lied about it. He has lied about self-funding his
> campaign. He has lied to his wives and his family.
> Given that he received a low-risk draft status
> because of a health condition that he does not
> have, he almost certainly lied to the military he
> seeks to command. The thing about habitual liars
> is, they lie habitually. If you’re voting for
> Trump because you think he’s a straight shooter,
> you’re a bigger sucker than those chumps losing
> money on both sides of the table in Atlantic City.
You probably didn't read your own cut and paste, but there is a big difference between a personal and business bankruptcy.