TWGB: Where Did it Go?

 

So, it looks like Trump is broke. He got Chubb to do his E. Jean Carroll thing, but they'll be fucked if they are standing his fraud trial bond. His lawyers say he can't get that bond, and no shit. This man had debts before he even ran for president. He has big loans from all kinds of people. And he barely owns any properties at all in full or outright. This is actually a pretty old story--Trump never has been worth what Trump says he is.  Trump's value has been about Trump's word--and we know what his word is worth now. 

Even after the NY AG seizes his properties, he may still owe. That's where we are. Because I don't know for sure that he put anything up for collateral for the Chubb bond for the Carroll case, but probably? And what isn't encumbered? 

But here's my naïve question for you all, my readers, in all seriousness, if Trump has been overstating his property valuations to get favorable loan terms, and evading taxes on his business wherever he could, and engaging in various frauds, like Trump University and his slush fund charity and so on, and money laundering and the like--where does his money go that he can't find a half billion in liquidity? Is it a thing where the money is gone and he's just a whole shitting inept businessman who frauded his face off and still ended up in a hole? Or did he invest elsewhere (offshore, you could say) where the money is available to him and he isn't letting other motherfuckers get hold of it? 

Do you think if he graciously lets us see his tax returns for the last couple of years like a responsible presidential candidate, we'll even know? 

TWGB: If It Walks Like a Duck

So, the news that the NYT got hold of about 20 years of Trump's tax return information follows a story about how a bankrupt Donald Trump tried to hijack his father's estate in desperation, which follows on Mary Trump's suit against the Trump family for what she as her father's heir should have received, which comes after news that Eric Trump will definitely have to sit for a deposition regarding Trump Org business, and that New York state is definitely looking at a tax fraud investigation against Trump.

This adds to our understanding that Donald Trump isn't so much a self-made man as his father's well-funded failure, and that he's been keeping himself going by various forms of grift, such as using his charity as a slush fund and starting schemes like Trump University. But this week has, among other things, hammered home that the trouble with Trump's finances are also a White House issue, in that he's staying in the taxpayer-funded housing on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to avoid having to stay in less luxurious taxpayer funded housing. He's grifting taxpayer dollars all the time. And his kids are probably not just following in his footsteps, but are also liable as hell.

Trump never was the amazing businessman he ran on for the presidency, he just played that guy on tv. 

If Trump were not elected to the presidency, this kind of financial scenario would make it impossible for him to be given a security clearance because he's basically wearing his leverage on his sleeve. (And he has been! Everyone knows this!) He had to demand Ivanka and Jared Kushner get their security clearances despite what where most likely business-related red flags (of which theirs were the tip of the iceberg to his) as it was.

But the big picture also has Trump scrambling to hold on to the office of the presidency not because he thinks he can do a great job with his second term (he can actually barely articulate what he even plans to do in a second term, which given all he has not accomplished in his first is seriously telling), but because he thinks he is shielded from having to face the music. Someone will shield him from the consequences. The taxpayers, or other interested parties, surely would....

Do what? And that's the problem we've got, yes? Trump needs someone to come to the rescue over his overleveraged ass and he's holding the whole damn US at stake. Winning the White House in 2016 convinced him that that Article 2 gave him special protection and that he owed whoever helped him win in 2016. So it's all very well and good that he says "America First", now (if for the low special customer price of $750 a year) but what exactly is he supposed to say when his notes are due?

(Spasibo i dobroy nochi?)

Anyways, at his press conference where he took very few questions and definitely wanted to talk about SCOTUS, he said the press should compare his financial statements, which he has released, to the tax information, but I think that's why New York State is actually after him in the first place.

(And not to leave this unsaid, my thoughts are with the family of Brad Parscale, who on this Sunday of all Sundays had some kind of bad patch, and I genuinely don't want people associated with Trump needlessly harmed or self-harming. And I also have Michael Caputo and his family in mind regarding his recent cancer diagnosis, which can spin anyone off their axis a bit. I'm the kind of g who prays for folks so they can testify someday. I'm not without a heart.)

UPDATE: This is also the best place to drop that Rosenstein was probably responsible for reining in the Mueller investigation to avoid info on Trump's finances  (Oh was that link deficient--here) due to it being Trump's red line for blowing up the investigation altogether. But Trump might as well have been saying "Yes, this is where the whole problem is please look at my finances" so?!?!?!?!?)

UPDATE: Trump has about 3400 conflicts of interest, which are about 3400 more conflicts of interest than any candidate for office should have, let alone a person who is already an incumbent.

Trump Makes Front Page News!

As only the third president to be impeached, today's vote was a significant vote--very historical! That has put him in something of a very special minority. But it should also be noted, if Trump was a little bit put out that he did not make the cover of Time Magazine as the Person of the Year (I think I did detect a whiff of sour grapes) at least he can take some consolation that he will definitely be on all of the front pages now.

You might suppose that, in response to this historic event, Trump might have tried to cover himself with at least a little sangfroid to demonstrate he wasn't even in the least bothered. If you did suppose that, however, I don't know whose act you've been watching all these years, because what he actually did was take the time to, during his campaign rally, suggest that a revered elder statesman was looking up from hell while patting himself on the back for assisting in the late congressman's getting the funeral honors he had earned during a lifetime of service while also taking his digs at the gentleman's widow, a current sitting congresswoman.

In other words, he was true to form. Sad!

If there was any hope he could take heart in the certainty that there is simply no likelihood that the GOP-majority Senate would vote to remove him from office, there is a great possibility that Senate Majority Leader McConnell's mouth has already snatched defeat from the jaws of an easy win. Democratic House Speaker Pelosi has suggested that the articles of impeachment might be delayed in being sent to the Senate to see exactly how the trial would be handled first.

This seems to me to be the right thing to do. The House Judiciary Committee extended an invitation to Trump to participate in the hearing on the constitutional basis for impeachment. (Trump via his lawyer declined.)  He and his supporters have claimed a lack of "due process" which rises to the level of histrionic and ahistorical (Witch trials? Pontius Pilate? when Trump is facing neither hanging nor crucifixion, but only a Senate trial) which have nothing to do with actual process and everything to do with having no actual fact-based defense of what Trump has done. (Trump, by the way, is the last person who should sit comfortably making a due process argument about the death penalty.)  His supporters ignored the facts and whined about process.

Well then, great. Here's a chance to have a stellar, non-sham process in the Senate. Instead of a rubber-stamp acquittal like the approval of his barely-qualified judicial nominations. You know, the kind of swift rush to exonerate a man that would sort of always look a little too rushed? The kind that doesn't even merit the term "trial"? The kind that always leaves a guilty little asterisk next to Trump's name--impeached by the House, but you know.  Mitch McConnell's wife works for Trump. And Lindsey Graham. You know the kind of man he is....

There is also another benefit to delay beyond any pressure it places on the Senate. This presidency is scandal-plagued. The turnover in White House staff, cabinet members, etc. for various reasons is all a part of the failure of leadership that goes to the very top--Trump himself. He said he would pick the very best people--has he? He said he'd drain the swamp--is that so? There will be other whistleblowers.  The story of Trump's financial records is not over. There are still lawsuits and SCOTUS decisions pending. An entire shoe store remains to fall, and I personally think this favor the long game. It is likely--I think, per the odds--Republicans will come to rue siding with this man.

Maybe that's just my opinion. But I say Trump's dealings look bad because they are bad, and it's because he's bad.  And I don't think a hidden good guy sits in that stage-makeup'd and grifting body.

Trump Slump

The last handful of days have been a little bit of heart-in-mouth time for some traders on today's market, as record sell-offs have been occurring, causing as of just today the largest drop in points in the Dow's history--which is not really saying a lot, yet. This probably is reminiscent for some of the point drop in September 2008, but that had been building for some time, and had a lot of other poor indicators--I don't know if this is the same thing at all. I don't think it's directly ascribable to Trump, although he likes to take credit for the economy, so...

Job creation has slowed here in the US--but that's not surprising as we are nearly at full-employment, and wages are going up, which did not just start happening in the Trump era, thanks, but when labor starts to have an edge, capital worries. As a wage earner myself, I like stronger wage and employment figures, and prefer my investments and pension plan to be about the long-term index, and I don't yet see a problem there...

Except the deregulation thing. See, I have noticed that Trump is trying to pry the brakes off what he sees as "the economy" because he and Republicans in general seem to think that rules make the game harder, and then nobody wants to play. However, what they do is fuss about currency and capital, and make stupid choices like tax plans that favor the rich. Companies like to take profits and pay dividends. This doesn't go into the hands of the people who will turn around and spend it--labor.

I don't know. This is a little correction. The dollar is weaker in anticipation of inflation, but the job market is still strong and the consumer confidence is there, but I feel like there is a certain level of volatility that might be political in nature.

The market doesn't like instability or insecurity. I feel like our US leadership is just a beehive of instability and insecurity, not because of the fundamentals, but because of the intangibles. Like, the current president of the US does not understand why nuclear first strikes are bad or why you invest in disease control or why sowing racial animosity here or abroad is stupid.

I'm bullish on anxiety and bearish on returns. Keep your money where it is if you are in a conservative fund. But day traders are going to be falling out in this mess at least this week.


EDIT: The Nikkei and tomorrow's futures do not really make one feel confident though.

Even TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Get the Blues

There is a limit to how much good faith one can presume of other people. When it comes to Senate Republicans, Senators Grassley and Graham pretty much exhausted whatever confidence I had in them with the "stunt" recommendation to the FBI to investigate Christopher Steele for possible criminal charges of lying to them. In the midst of an investigation into whether Trump campaign officials conspired with Russia to use stolen information to win an election, the person these partisan hacks decide to finger as a problem is the whistleblower?

Add to that the news that the DOJ is opening a new probe into the Clinton email server and that the Clinton Foundation is currently being investigated by the FBI, and it's hard for me not to see a pattern that looks like Republicans using the Justice Department for partisan ends. It doesn't even seem all that low-key. And while they are at it, pretending that the FBI was actually Hillary Clinton's fan club. 

This is the kind of thing that makes me dread blogging. It isn't healthy to look around and just see examples of shameful dealing everywhere.

But then, someone does something that really picks me up--Senator Dianne Feinstein decided to release a transcript of a congressional interview with Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, which was the research company that produced the dossier. And it appears to confirm what by now we should already know--the dossier was not the reason for the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia connections, because they already received information from someone inside the Trump orbit. Simpson also related the Steele broke off contact with the FBI in October 2016 when he became concerned that there might have been a pro-Trump faction within the FBI (which wasn't such a stretch--anti-Clinton is probably more like it) when a narrative was fed to The New York Times that no links were found between Trump and Russia. 

Now, I know this new information probably isn't going to change the whole conversation (I don't know--Trump hasn't mean-Tweeted about FBI DD McCabe since it was reported that his speculation about McCabe having anything to do with the Clinton investigation was rubbish) but it sheds some light where there was obfuscation. 

In other Steele Dossier news (how is there more Steele Dossier news?), Trump attorney Michael Cohen is filing a defamation suit against Buzzfeed for publishing the not-actually-discredited document. This strikes me as amazing for much the same reason as Trump's threatening to file a defamation suit against anyone over Michael Wolffe's Fire and Fury--it certainly looks like an effort to silence people to prevent true information coming out, and the discovery process would probably be brutal and unfavorable to President Trump because, and stick with me on this, Trump has a four decade long, well-documented history in multiple books and publications as being really shady. Why, before he was a fan of Trump, Steve Bannon shopped oppo connecting Trump to organized crime.  The connections aren't hard to make. 

It also isn't hard to see what Russia might have gotten in return for their "investment". This story from Spencer Ackerman that a White House official floated the idea of the US withdrawing from Eastern Europe reminds me a bit of the search for "deliverables" Trump wanted to offer Putin last year. And if one wanted an example of what a financially-leveraged President might be able to do, say, for his creditors, there is a nice example of a favor with respects to waiving penalties for interest manipulation that he is doing for a few banks, including Deutsche Bank. (The very one Steve Bannon noted might be of particular interest to Mueller's investigation.)

Rep. Aaron Schock is Miled Out

It's a sad thing when a relatively new model succumbs to high mileage, but that's what seems to have happened to the sporty, yet conservative young Congressman from Illinois. Although there seems to have been quite the list of expense-irregularities regarding the...

Look, I am not really sure why I'm covering this story except as a reason to use the ab picture and to caution other young politicians to really not fudge your records about the taxpayer money you are using for the things you are supposed to be doing in your elected office. This is part of my regular grouse about professionalism. Too many politicians seem to act like a kind of minor celebrity, and not as much like serious lawmakers. It's great to get publicity. It's better to do things that benefit your constituents and live up to what you ran for office for. Mascots are for the sidelines--we should elect people who get in the scrimmage. Once caught up in a mess like this, it's going to be that much harder for someone like Schock to get taken seriously and work his way back if that's what he has a mind to do.

Politics should be business. And it's hard to reconcile fiscal responsibility with this record.

Sen. Levin nails Goldman Sachs on a "shitty deal".

Selling "the shitty deal" was a top priority. They knew they had a "product" (somewhere in my back-issues I think I've opined upon looking at these weird mutant investments as "products" when they aren't anything tangible, understandable, or even with any understood value--I'm agin' it) that was basically worthless, but then sold it. Enthusiastically.

I fully appreciate how Levin repeats the term "shitty deal" here. It is a vulgarism, but what they did seems pretty vulgar--they "swindled". They openly misrepresented a "product". If you want a handy term for CDO--try: "pig in a poke". That term needs to be repeated to demonstrate the degree to which the responsible people at Goldman Sachs knew what they had--but were prepared to make money on it anyway--even with the knowledge that their clients would be left holding a "shitty" bag eventually.

It's not a word we commonly hear a Senator say--but it was very merited.