The former president is struggling to pay his New York civil fraud fine.
Views: 23
The schadenfreude is strong
ALL THINGS HUMAN
HOMO SUM; HUMANI NIL A ME ALIENUM PUTO.
It’s quite good. A billion dollars, after all, isn’t a lot of money in high finance; if you’ve got good collateral, you can get it tomorrow. So it’s pretty clear that a fair assessment of Trump’s empire isn’t $10 billion with a low debt-to-value. Also, it doesn’t help that Trump is known for strategic bankruptcies. As J.P. Morgan said, “The most important thing in a borrower is character.”
But since the judgement is purely disgorgement of ill-gotten gains of his frauds, the situation suggests that his net worth is entirely due to his ill-gotten gains. This isn’t just a skeezy 10% frosting on an otherwise legitimate profit. I suspect the essence of it was that large insurers and lenders knew they were cutting him a break in order to accumulate political debts that they would be able to cash in under a Trump administration.