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Guest Post: Is Donald Trump Broke?
Doug Litowitz raises a speculative contrarian position on Donald Trump's exact worth, based on what was released to the FEC. The bottom line is that no one knows Trump's net worth, but the speculation usually starts in the billions. Doug Litowitz explores the opposite possibility, namely that Trump is, in relative terms, broke. This is solely his speculation and is not meant as a factual statement but a possibility that has been ignored in the mainstream press.
Submitted by Doug Litowitz via TheAlphaPages.com,
I’ve just slogged through all ninety-two pages of Donald Trump’s financial disclosure submission to the Federal Election Commission, and I can’t make heads or tails of it.
I cannot tell how much Trump is worth, if anything. His empire, if he has one, is as mysterious as his haircut, and as impervious as his skyscraper in Chicago - a gigantic phallic mirror named after himself.
In terms of real, lasting assets - is Donald Trump worth roughly $10 billion?
The mainstream press erred horrendously by taking seriously Trump’s disclosure to the FEC, by asking reporters to sit down with the document and try to understand it on its own terms, so to speak. This approach yielded nothing but exhaustion and bewilderment. No one dared speculate that Trump’s purpose in disclosing so much was to disclose so little. It was a 52-Card Pickup, a maze of trees without a forest. The assets - some as small as the single-digit thousands - pile up like obsessive compulsive do-dads in the claustrophobic home of a hoarder. The range of projects goes beyond greed and passes into desperation. High rise buildings and golf courses are one thing, but the list of assets quickly degrades into obscure wineries, Israeli vodka and energy drinks, a mattress and clothing line, television shows, a pension from the screen actors guild, bottled water, book royalties, speaking gigs, and endless inchoate and impossible to value ‘marks’ (i.e. trademarks) and positions in partnerships that have his own name.
This is why the New York Times threw up its hands and proclaimed with cool intrigue that Trump’s income and wealth were “hard to pinpoint.”
The Wall Street Journal punted, saying tautologically that Trump’s disclosures contain disclosures totaling at least $1.5 billion, but conceding that the actual numbers are not known.
Forbes puts his wealth at $4 billion, Bloomberg at $2.9 billion. Trump said recently that he is worth $10 billion and that his wealth has increased by more than $1 billion in the last year due to spiraling real estate prices (this was probably supposed to impress people, but it actually shows a dangerous volatility). The FEC form allows the filing party to value assets and liabilities within a range or at an upper limit, and most of Trump’s assets are vague interests of indeterminate worth and undisclosed indebtedness.
Trump’s illiquid assets and unknown liabilities may or may not offset each other – and he isn’t telling.
What does that leave?
Not much. A relatively small amount of money in a couple of hedge funds, and brokerage portfolios of garden-variety stocks, a couple hundred thousand in gold, and other ho-hum assets consisting almost entirely of his ‘marks.’ He could be worth hundreds of millions, theoretically, but if leveraged, his worth could be negative. Who knows?
This ambiguity plays into Trump’s hands: he loves a playing field where there is no difference between reality and fantasy, where the majestic paneled board room is really a stage set, where he is Making America Great by manufacturing clothes in Bangladesh, where he insults Mexicans and then sues a Spanish television network for not showing the Miss USA pageant, a paean to female innocence brought to us by a womanizer on his third marriage. This is Trump-territory: a nowhere land in which he threatens to sue anyone who disparages the size of an empire that he refuses to disclose.
You will never figure out Trump’s worth by looking at numbers. He’s far too slick for that, he can hide the ball forever.
So let’s put aside the numbers. Instead, let’s look at his FEC submission as a psychological document, a testament, a confession.
Here we are faced with a paradox: Trump does not speak, act, or behave like a normal billionaire, nor even like a renegade or eccentric billionaire. He behaves like someone who is desperately broke.
I know that sounds odd. Improbable. Counterintuitive. And I don’t – I can’t – I won’t - say for certain whether he is broke. But I think it is a very distinct possibility.
I base this judgment on many years of working closely with very rich people. I’ve had the pleasure – though that is not quite the right word – of spending a lot of time around people who are extremely wealthy, and none of them behaves remotely like Trump.
For one thing, true billionaires hate seeing their name in the papers or being discussed in public. They don’t want people stealing their ideas, they don’t want scrutiny from regulators, they don’t want others to control the narrative about their business dealings, and frankly there is no financial advantage to being well known among ordinary people who don’t have money to invest.
The truly wealthy seek to be known in the right circles and not to the general public. It’s a fair bet that if the richest twenty hedge fund managers walked down the street, no one in the general public would turn their head; conversely, it is a also a fair bet that the twenty guys at the airport talking loudly into their cell phones about how they are returning to the head office after closing a big deal in Baltimore are actually worth next to nothing. Powerful people have secrets, barriers, walls. If Trump really had special ideas or assets, he would crave secrecy, not publicity.
Second, the truly wealthy do not brand themselves. Whatever you may think of how Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or Steven Cohen made their fortunes, they did not get into the bottled water industry to compete with “Trump Ice,” nor do them sponsor beauty pageants or have television shows where they send out contestants to make ice cream cones and then berate them mercilessly for choosing $1.45 as a price point. There is a very revealing type of bullying taking place on Trump’s show The Apprentice.
He never puts himself up against equals in world of finance, but surrounds himself with childlike sycophants whose fate he controls with an iron hand. By demonstrating so much power against unequal opponents, and by expressing this power in an artificial setting, he actually conveys his own powerlessness in the real world. In attempting to come off as patrician, he devolves into sanctimonious self-aggrandizement while flanked by his robotic and obedient offspring who are displayed like products.
Third, billionaires do not announce how much money they have. It’s déclassé. And they don’t want to boast because it gives the Internal Revenue Service, the SEC, and regulators another bite at the apple. If someone says you are worth $1 billion and you are really worth $10 billion that can be great news! Use it to your advantage.
Finally, real billionaires also choose their deals carefully, weighing risk and return. They don’t start clothing lines or energy drinks because the risks (bad reviews, parodies, lawsuits) outweigh the rewards. What kind of person starts their own Trump University and then lets it dissolve a few years later amid lawsuits and investigations by the New York State Attorney General that the students were being defrauded. What is the economic advantage to a billionaire 10 times over of having a brand of bottled water that brings in $280,000, or a beauty pageant, or a line of cheap clothing, or a modeling agency, when the money can just sit in an account that mirrors the market and makes double digit growth? Some of these eponymous projects can be dismissed as flights of narcissism; but there are so many that something other than narcissism is at work here.
It smells of overreach, desperation, and pettiness.
Fourth, consider how Trump reacts with vituperative indignation when anyone has the temerity to question his supposed wealth. When comedienne Rosie O’Donnell claimed that Trump was a “snake oil salesman” who had been bankrupt, he threatened to sue her for defamation (presumably because the bankruptcy of Trump casino was not a personal bankruptcy for Trump himself). When MSNBC reporter Lawrence O’Donnell suggested that Trump was worth less than $1 billion, Trump threatened to sue. A decade ago he sued the author of a book about him for claiming that he was only worth a few hundred million instead of the nearly $3 billion that he claimed to be worth at the time. He even threatened to sue his ex-wife Ivana for talking too much about his finances, in violation of her agreement to keep quiet.
Methinks he doth protest too much.
Why threaten to sue someone for underestimating your wealth . . . unless . . . unless . . . unless the sole valuable asset that you have is the general belief that you are worth $10 billion? Unless, that is, if you are really much poorer, and you have nothing to fall back on besides your reputation, and your main asset is the impression you convey. In that case, you might consider doing precisely what Trump does.
Here is where I am heading: Could it be the case that Trump is an empty suit with no meaningful net assets other than his persona, his brand? That like a shark, he has to keep moving and keep projecting the image of great wealth, or else his empire will sink? This is consistent with the FEC disclosure document where so many of his assets are ‘marks’; in other words, he makes money by lending his name.
Trump’s FEC document impresses me as the statement of a person who does not have much of anything other than himself – he is his own product. He is the professional wrestler of the financial world – a person who is famous for being famous, the tragic product of a society that produces images instead of actual things.
Yes, he has built a few golf courses and buildings, but so have others – on a bigger scale; what he has really built is himself, or rather a caricature of himself. My suspicion is that Trump has nothing other than himself. He invented himself. He is his own brand, and that is all he is. Any crack in the mask will cause the whole thing to crumble down.
It is fitting that he gets a pension from the Screen Actors Guild.
He is an actor who plays a man worth $10 billion.
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I read his book "The Art of the Deal" as a kid, came to the same conclusions you did. All show and impression management, get out of the way and take profits before folks figure it out, keep the churn moving.
re I’ve just slogged through all ninety-two pages of Donald Trump’s financial disclosure submission to the Federal Election Commission, and I can’t make heads or tails of it.
It sounds like the auhor (Jeb's accountant?) might be confusing Donald Trump's Financial Disclosure Submission with that of the Clinton "Foundation".
This article is bullshit. Just another hit piece with no substance.
HEY LITTLE WITTS,
YOU are one stupid FUCK wittlitz NUT!
I'm fed up with politican's,
GO TRUMP!
Can you call him broke being on his last billion dollars? I wish I could say that.
So if trump pretends to be rich, but is really broke, doesn't that make him the perfect american? And if he's the perfect american, then why not the best choice for president?
good point, americans want and need a con man
who has experience with mobsters and slighting
them of their stolen finances. i'm not entirely
convinced trump is the guy for the situation at hand
but he is close, perhaps?
Until he kills a lion he's not a real American. Maybe Shrub could arrange something?
Trump: the Ultimate Narcissist in the most Narcissistic Society in the world!
You might just want to take a peek at the current occupant of the White House.
I wish I were as "broke" as The Don.
I guess we thought the same thing :-)
Is trump any more or less "broke" than the USA?
I wish I were as broke as Trump. More bullshit on ZH.
in a debt based system the most
bankrupt be the sovereign. no,
deal with it or fix it.
Listen ANYONE that runs a casino that routinely enters bankruptcy is a charlatan at best and/or a criminally grossly incompetent businessman.
Net Worth and real estate should not be as nebulous as it is here, but the clear investigation is not the net worth math but WHO owns Donald Trump's DEBT across his "Empire?"
Who picks up the phone and tells The Donald what is going to happen next?
$10 billion "in real estate" is frankly chump change these dayz when you consider other markets like London and Tokyo and the growth rate of the emerging markets - not even a piece of Beijing before Olympics?
That is not a rhetorical question, but rather one to be openly known by the financial media and hence the rest of us.
Who owns Donald Trump?
How is his real estate "nebulous"? It's just so much that one can't comprehend it all, but the proper adjective is "enormous" not "nebulous". He lists lots of specific stuff, just so much it's impossible to think of it all. A vast empire.
An Ass Vampire? What?
Another ZH hit article on Trump.
Are you kidding? They have hit articles and articles supporting him that appear here. It is not only one or the other.
Someone earlier today accused Tyler of trying to get folks to vote for Trump because "Tyler says so."
I fucking wish he was a hero. He is a con man who is trying to get in on the biggest Ponzi scam in world history.
"He is a con man who is trying to get in on the biggest Ponzi scam in world history. "
EXACTLY! That's why I support him. Hillary appears to be sincere...and she obviously isn't. Obama crushed the will of all the American socialists/communists because he turned out to be a neocon. Nobody will be disappointed with Trump. In fact, he could surprise to the upside. He could become a Ronald Reagan...or the Forest Gump of Presidents, accidentally stumbling into greatness. Hillary would NEVER stumble into greatness.
1 billion 2 billion 10 billion 100 million... does it even matter all that much? The guy is getting ..a.s Rand Paul said...a billion dollars in FREE publicity.. Its a popularity contest and the Trumpster is doing just fine.
What is this writer smoking?
Trump is in the real estate business. He puts his name in big letters on things. That name happens to be "Trump" which means something dominating as a word. He plays it for all he's worth.
It's bold and brash and a bank I used to work at hesitated to lend him money because we weren't sure there's substance there. Well that bank is not doing so great since 2008 and Trump is. And thos buildings with his name on them are as solid and substatial as anything one could think of.
The question with Trump has always been about his debt, but he hasn't had a Chapter in a while, and with rates at rock bottom and rents increasing, it's great to be a debtor who owns buildings.
He's running for President. Therefore he has to come out of whatever shadows he was still in. He already said he's running because we need a competent President, not the normal sort of dweeb we've been getting. Hey why not, maybe he's trying to do a good thing. I don't see a reason to think he's insincere.
"a gigantic phallic mirror named after himself "... Dick Grande
"a gigantic phallic mirror named after himself "... Dick Grande
FUCKING A,
You certainly got that right..!
TRUMP ROCKS!
Nothing worse than a broke financial pervert at parties. I usually end up locking them up alone in closets to keep them from humping other guests legs.
Ah, so you've been to one of DSK's parties too?
i'm not voting for trump because of his money.
i'm voting for him because of his hair.
So if he shaved it bald, then a no vote?
WOULDN'T THAT be ironic.
The Real Reason that "the Donald" is running for President - he is broke and needs the cash to buy a burger at McDonalds.
HAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Ain't it great? Get campaign donations to pay for your self promotion campaign! If you win, what a hoot for the brand, if you lose, oh well, folks will know who you are and maybe spend more money on your bullshit.
seems to be a Zio-Jewish troll: Doug Litowitz.
Yes, then he must be anti anti anti.
Trump still did not do a knee fall in front of any Zionist so far.
you beat me to it.. was going to call this shit out too... the friggin lox lover also said 'why not stash your money to mirror the market for double digit growth...' what secret jew fund gets that all the time?? must be the ones that Dimon, et all are allowed to rape
The journalist simply complains Donals Trump's wealth cannot be enumerated in an easy to follow 1-7 item list of recognizable skyscrappers. He has obscure posssesions, such as wineries, a TV show and a brand of vodka. Beyond human comprehension, Trump is obviously broke.
Accounting tricks and money flow are the only things keeping BK USA up and running.
Many of the Banks are in the same fix, they mark to model instead of marking assests to market. They changed the reporting rules in 2007-2008 because they knew too many banks would fail otherwise.
The author does not say it is the truth. He is asking, is it possible that if you settled out all of the accounting that he is broke (or not nearly as wealthy as he claims)?
I see.
So your sayn that our economy is something like Trumps hair do.
A mystery, something covering nothing, an illusion.
Good call.
Sure, I'll take credit for your apt metaphor. No probelm. Also just like the whole bankrupt shebang.
Some one could sabotage the big T on the Trump tower.
Sorry, I am hopelessly juvenile.
I cannot tell how much Trump is worth, if anything.
I think that is because you are an idiot rolled in bullshit.
All of the US candidates are butt ugly. We should have a president who looks good in a bikini:
http://www.nairaland.com/2161475/hottest-world-leader-sexy-bikini
Donald Trump loves this country, why would he bother upsetting the apple cart when he has his own empire? Think about that. $400,000 Presidential salary is chump cash a year. Why would he downgrade as a tycoon unless he cared about turning our country around?
http://www.paywizard.org/main/salary/vip-check/salaries-president-obamas...
Because Trump is a brand. He is advertising his brand. If he loses look at the FREE air time his brand got. If he wins, all the better, that's worth another $150,000,000 (Just ask Bill and Hill) plus at least 4 years of FREE brand advertisement.
Trump has already incurred more damage in ill will from the power structure than he could ever hope to recoup unless he wins. Way more than 150B.
Sign the two change.org petitions asking for Kelly's removal from future Fox GOP RINO debates! 12K+ have already signed.
I saw that 4,000 shitlist yesterday. Fuck petitions, you attack socialist in a different manner. Only a well educated American can understand how to pull it off. ;)
How to insult a "progressive" - YouTube
It doesn't seem likely Trump is broke. Real estate is soaring, and he's in real estate. He had a successful show that they were renewing which he abandoned. He was also apparently smart enough to walk away from Atlantic City before it died.
There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for his actions, which is that he cares for the country and wants to fix it. This is quite consistent with his previous actions I'm aware of, such as fixing the central park ice rink out of his own pocket because he couldn't bear to watch the corrupt mess the city was making of the job. He's right, too, if he doesn't fix it, none of the others will.
However, the possibility he could be broke by this time next year, thus impacting an otherwise likely 3rd party race, doesn't seem implausible.
Who gives a shit how many $$$'s this Asshole has when he is Morally Bankrupt?
For all of ZH's foibles I never thought for a moment that the posters here would clamp their lips so firmly upon the the Donald's anus...
Trump has out flanked the competition. He puts on a good show. He's the only one that even half way talks on the ZH side of things. He said Yellen's policies might be creating a bubble but it's good for him. Nobody else will say anything close to that. He's still a dangerous central planning clown like the rest of them but the show will grab people. Elections aren't about policies or ethics, they are popularity contests where the best showman can win. Right now Trump is the most entertaining clown in the circus.
The problem is Trump will act as if he can 'make the trains run on time' and people will just further empower the executive if he's elected. Well that will happen regardless, but it will happen faster with Trump. Even if the powers that be don't like Trump that centralization of power will serve them and Trump isn't going to do much that will hurt their interests so four years of Trump could be tolerated. It's a very dangerous situation despite the entertainment value.
The American Mussolini...
Fox and Ailes turned right wing political discourse into a pure entertainment profit center. Reap what you sow....
Trump has always been broke best I can tell. He lives off the system of credit and speculation.
So long as a person can get financing for grand projects and companies he can live the high life. There are many people who do this. That's why the central banks have to keep the wheels turning. If they don't, if we go back to a real system of savings and capital and risk so many people at the top will come tumbling down.
Every election cycle Americans prove how fucking stupid they really are.
If you bunch of retards think one fucking thing will change with Trump in office, you get what you deserve.
Looking forward to ZH 2019 with same bunch slurping up the same shit with a different wraper.
Well of course things won't get better. At least with Trump as they get worse we'll have someone interesting on television to lie to us about it, instead of a hippie lesbian warmonger.
Hmm, sounds like the tribe is unhappy.
What do libtards, gimptards, and retards have in common?
Looks like someone let a LIBTARD in the door.
...or maybe a scared out of their panties GOP-tard.
Classic hit piece that essentially says nothing of value.