2) His wealth was not created by himself, at any rate. He lied and said he inherited a small loan of a million, when in fact it was at least 2 orders of magnitude more than that. His father was the real smart businessman and his career has largely been failure upon failure.
3) He basically did win the lottery of being born to a wealthy father and squandered it all. How much did he squander is very hard to say when he himself covers up the details.
So yes, he is incompetent with money and business. He is competent with power, intimidation, and getting his way. That may have worked in the small pond of the 2016 election, but that is about the only place the man's been successful.
Mark Cuban speculated that he wasn't a billionaire, and maybe not even a 500-millionaire. He talked big and pushed the brand, because that's all he had.
His main claim to fame, nearest I can tell, is a mix of poorly run real estate, reality TV, schlepping shit tier steaks, and his online university that got sued out of existence.
In general, I agree with you.
There's a good Planet Money podcast on it as well: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/22/725893104/episode-914-trump-a...
It is also why the Trump family has preemptively sued Deutsche bank in an attempt to seal records and obstruct any investigation.
Other tools he's used include hiring undocumented immigrants for construction and then not paying them and refusing to pay contractors that worked on his buildings. He maintains his wealth by making deals and then refusing to pay when the bill comes. The bankruptcies are just a part of this pattern of behaviour.
I imagine he will get rich even if U.S. goes through a bankrupcy.
Much of what he has left was gotten by repeatedly breaking the law, and somehow only ending up with civil liability instead of criminal convictions.
Now he is actively wrecking the US economy and has somehow bullied the GOP into going along with it.
"If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline." -- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Branson
If you start with a lot you can deplete much of it before you have only a little.
He made money by burning other people and companies, but he came out quite well from it.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
Bogle started Vanguard in 1975:
> ... usually, every investment property should be owned by a separate limited liability company that owns only one property and that is not engaged in any other business activity. The reason is simple: to maximize asset protection.
https://www.keytlaw.com/azllclaw/asset-protection/how-many-l...
And you really shouldn't go throwing around spurious accusations like that without any evidence.
So which is it? He started 500 businesses, or he has a few businesses that are made up of multiple properties.
I have friends with a few dozen rental properties, all in separate LLCs. I wouldn't say they "started 50 businesses".
So with your wording you should say Trump owned 500 properties and 6 of them lost money. And like any real estate investor, when the properties lost money, Trump gave those 6 properties to the creditors.
But I think my wording is more accurate. Your friend's rental properties may not be individual businesses, but Trump Tower or the Taj Mahal are.
The vast majority of his businesses have no customers, and no regular income. They aren't intended to make a profit--they're intended to protect an asset from the bankruptcy of his real businesses. There was never any chance that they would need to go bankrupt, so he gets no credit for them not going bankrupt.
Where do you get this? Is this just more BS with no evidence, like the money laundering accusation?
I haven't seen a complete list, but even Wikipedia has a list with a lot of businesses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trump_Organization
> they're intended to protect an asset from the bankruptcy of his real businesses
Even if you were right about Trump's businesses, corporations don't work like that. The stock can be taken in bankruptcy so they don't protect assets inside the corp from bankruptcy of the holder. They only protect assets outside the corp from bankruptcy of the corp.
Put another way, if I were given $100M by my dad back in the 40+ years ago, and managed to grow it to, say, $500M by today, that would be nice, but I wouldn't consider myself "good with money". And it looks like the real figure for Trump may be north of $400M[0], which makes even $1B -- if he has that today -- look not all that impressive.
We're talking about the US President here, someone we should feel comfortable with influencing/managing the fate of trillions of dollars. Trump is not that guy.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...
The public at large does not know how much Trump is worth because he won't disclose much of anything.
See how this level of discussion of not just demanding a citation, but then limiting what citations you accept to an extremely small set of documents isn't constructive?
It's a reasonable question, but 1 minute googling got this report https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/here-are... with 3 of them viz.
The Trump Taj Mahal Casino
Trump’s Plaza
The Trump Castle
What evidence in your view, other than his his tax returns and financial statements, is there to show his wealth? Because that's fundamentally what's being requested. I don't think those exact documents are needed if there are good alternatives. Suggest some alternatives.
>What evidence in your view, other than his his tax returns and financial statements, is there to show his wealth?
You really think that you need tax returns to prove he is currently wealthy? Is that a consistent standard you apply to everyone? When someone says that Bill Gates is rich, do you request the same level of documentation before you believe it? Are you doubting the relevance of other indicators of wealth such as lifestyle and property holdings?
> The public at large does not know how much Trump is worth
So this is about HOW MUCH he is worth. Hence the request for docs quantifying it.
Then I say
> Suggest some alternatives
And you just snowjob with questions in return. I asked a question. Please answer it by stating what publicly available docs will show trump's wealth.
> Are you doubting the relevance of other indicators of wealth such as lifestyle and property holdings?
Irrelevant.
We want to know how much so as to judge his competency at business. Please answer, what public documents will show his wealth.
Also why are you so willing to assume he is a competent businessman without actual, audited financial evidence to back up his claims?
If he could have been richer by not being bankrupt then that would indicate competence to me.
Also daddy gave him $435 million IIRC. If everyone on HN had got that I suspect most of us would have done better.
Because money laundering is illegal?
If.
Did Trump ever put more effort into anything in his campaign and Presidency than he put into preventing his tax returns from getting out?
If you want to claim he isn't as rich as he claims, then then I'm not disputing that at all (I haven't a clue), but to claim he isn't rich does not align with existing evidence without fiddling with how we define rich and poor in ways we don't otherwise fiddle with such definitions.
Having, say $300 million sounds like a lot. But if you inherited $700 million (as Trump likely did), having only $300 left today is a catastrophic failure.
And no, those six bankruptcies were not strategic, they were failures to operate a business. One bankruptcy is strategic, two a coincidence, six a signal of incompetence. The sheer number of shell corps he's founded and thousands of civil court cases points to exploiting investors through shady practices.
Example: Business 1 buys a $1M piece of equipment with 30% down and 70% credit. After a couple years, and knowing that Business 1 is not that profitable anyway, the machine is sold to Business 2 for $150k, even though it's probably worth $700k still.
Business 2 makes $550k profit on the books. Business 1 files bankruptcy. The creditor loses their $250k outstanding loan. If the same owners own both businesses, they come out massively ahead.
Rinse / repeat with dozens (or hundreds) of businesses, some automated workflows and depreciation tables, credit line hacking, etc.
An established real estate family will have plenty of room to shuffle assets and credit lines around in a favorable way within those limits... for a generation or two.
He did not create 515 for-profit businesses.
Those who were fooled, were fooled because they chose to be.