what sayeth the donald?

I’d listen to Donald. He didn’t get where he is by being stupid.

Really knows how to run a business. His casinos just went bankrupt.

You can like him or hate him, but the guy was born with this unbelievable talent for money matters. He just “feels” money. And I listen. I may not like the messenger but the message is on target.

This spending in unsustainable. If he knows it, many others in the Administration know it too. So it leaves the question. Why are we spending like that? Is there another agenda?

Congress will scrub President Obama’s name from a list of earmark cosponsors in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill.

The reason: Whether Obama cosponsored the earmark depends on what the definition of earmark is and when an earmark becomes an earmark, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The provision itself is still considered an earmark, and it’s staying in the bill (HR 1105) – but it’s losing the Obama brand. …

Subsequently, Senate Appropriations Committee spokesman Rob Blumenthal said Obama’s name would be removed from future versions of the congressional report identifying earmarks and their sponsors.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/airbrushing_obamas_name_off_ea_1.html

I always try not to like “The Donald,” but it never works! He’s worth listening to.

I like how he highlight how us “little people” who have been playing by the rules (keeping up our mortgage and credit payments, etc.) are the ones who really lose.

exactly.

Sean Hannity really needs to stop polishing George Bush’s rear end. Until the GOP gets real about what they’ve supported the past 8 years, they are dead. They don’t get it, do they? They absolutely have to get back to real conservative principles–fiscal responsibility.

Hannity whining about Obama is ridiculous because they supported 19% growth in the federal government, raising the debt ceiling 5 times, and soaring deficits under Bush. They just look like hypocrites because they refuse to acknowledge the damage they supported under BUSH.

Trump was having nothing of it, so good for him. And, Trump is right about being a “hawk when you need to be a hawk,” but that Iraq was just incredibly STUPID.

Interesting interview, thanks for posting it.

I saw that interview. It was pretty good. I don’t care much for Hannity, though. I didn’t always like Trump, but I do now. He does know about money and how to make it. Can’t wait to see the new Apprentice.

It is easy to make money when you come from money.

I have had the pleasure of dealing with Donald and his people on various matters over the year. He is a hard nosed negotiator who is very talented at working various entities and getting them in line with his needs.

At the same time, I would not hold him up as some kind of finanical genious. His major holdings have gone bankrupt twice and have only been saved by his unique ability to leverage his name into getting people to invest more money in him. It’s funny how America works, he is bankrupt, does a star turn on NBC’s The Apprentice and the extra celebrity leads to rounds of investment in new projects.

He is once again on the verge of collapse as several of his projects are stalled and he can not repay his loans nor receive additional credit.

He is in fact the embodiment of the business culture that has brought our economy to its current state.

I will still watch the debut of the Celebrity Apprentice tonight, because he entertains the hell out of me. But, as for his theories on economics, I will take a pass.

Its a nice interview, thanks!

February 28, 2009
Talking Business

Propping Up a House of Cards

Next week, perhaps as early as Monday, the American International Group is going to report the largest quarterly loss in history. Rumors suggest it will be around $60 billion, which will affirm, yet again, A.I.G.’s sorry status as the most crippled of all the nation’s wounded financial institutions. The recent quarterly losses suffered by Merrill Lynch and Citigroup — “only” $15.4 billion and $8.3 billion, respectively — pale by comparison.

At the same time A.I.G. reveals its loss, the federal government is also likely to announce — yet again! — a new plan to save A.I.G., the third since September. So far the government has thrown $150 billion at the company, in loans, investments and equity injections, to keep it afloat. It has softened the terms it set for the original $85 billion loan it made back in September. To ease the pressure even more, the Federal Reserve actually runs a facility that buys toxic assets that A.I.G. had insured. A.I.G. effectively has been nationalized, with the government owning a hair under 80 percent of the stock. Not that it’s worth very much; A.I.G. shares closed Friday at 42 cents.

Donn Vickrey, who runs the independent research firm Gradient Analytics, predicts that A.I.G. is going to cost taxpayers at least $100 billion more before it finally stabilizes, by which time the company will almost surely have been broken into pieces, with the government owning large chunks of it. A quarter of a trillion dollars, if it comes to that, is an astounding amount of money to hand over to one company to prevent it from going bust. Yet the government feels it has no choice: because of A.I.G.’s dubious business practices during the housing bubble it pretty much has the world’s financial system by the throat.

If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks “will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect.” A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners — which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.

I don’t doubt this bit of conventional wisdom; after the calamity that followed the fall of Lehman Brothers, which was far less enmeshed in the global financial system than A.I.G., who would dare allow the world’s biggest insurer to fail? Who would want to take that risk? But that doesn’t mean we should feel resigned about what is happening at A.I.G. In fact, we should be furious. More than even Citi or Merrill, A.I.G. is ground zero for the practices that led the financial system to ruin.

[...]

Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are supposedly insured by A.I.G. would suddenly be sitting on immense losses. Their already shaky capital structures would be destroyed. A.I.G. helped create the illusion of regulatory capital with its swaps, and now the government has to actually back up those contracts with taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing. It would be funny if it weren’t so awful.

I asked Mr. Arvanitis, the former A.I.G. executive, if the company viewed what it had done during the bubble as a form of gaming the system. “Oh no,” he said, “they never thought of it as abuse. They thought of themselves as satisfying their customers.”

That’s either a remarkable example of the power of rationalization, or they were lying to themselves, figuring that when the house of cards finally fell, somebody else would have to clean it up.

That would be us, the taxpayers.

AIG: Propping Up a House of Cards

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/business/28nocera.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

what did he say that you agreed or disagreed with, in this video?

i don’t think that was the point of this interview.

so, does this mean you disagree with Trump that we need to prop up the banks?

Under the for what it’s worth category, on many Trump projects all he is doing is “selling” the use of his name. Other developers are taking the risk.

I view him more as a marketing maven, and a VERY good one at that, than a financial genius.

He has also gone in and out of bankruptcy on his casinos as well.

All this said, he is no dope. He knows how the game is played.

Actually, I agree with much of what he said, but there is a blatant hypocrisy as his holding and business interests have participated in much of what he decries as far as the banking industry, credit, deficits etc are concerned.

Trump international simply did not practice what the Donald is preaching here.

Good message, flawed messenger.

Trump in 2012?

isn’t that always the problem…either good message bad messenger, or vice versa. haha

Trump is a very conservative person – more like a Libetarian. So people like him and patrick Buchannan never supported the Iraq War but for different reasons than the leftist doves.

He also does not seem to get involved in politics too often so his firm negative assessment of Obama’s policies should be seen in that context.

Funny, I had this discussion about Trump on Hannity with a friend last night. The man has 9 lives! I am not a big fan of the Donald but I do believe he knows the ins and outs of the business world and what he needs to do to come out alive.

Trump has been refining his political message, and I did appreciate his strong support for Hillary.
Overall though, he markets himself.
I’ll leave my financial affairs in better hands!

I’m sorry, past 1:00 a.m. and I have to get up to work, so I can’t listen to the man now.

But it’s not our government’s job to “prop up the banks.” Their job and oath is the Constitution, including the General Welfare clause of the Preamble… and to enforce the regulatory laws, many of which have been broken flagrantly.

[imagine all caps] Put the banks, including the Fed Reserve system under bankruptcy reorganization, sort out the legit. stuff from the crap (derivatives and other ponzi scheme gambling stuff) and freeze the crap to deal with as things get better under control [end all caps]. We do have enough people that know how to do this.

Here – Video, audio or transcript of Feb 10 interview:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/10/economist_james_galbraith_bailed_out_banks

or Google “Homeowners and Bank Protection Act.”

As to the blithe comment that “It’s easy to make money when you come from money,” that’s a far too typical, resentful, ignorant comment and not on topic.

It might be easy to START with money when you “come from money” as it would be if someone handed you a bucket of money. But the landscape is littered with the failures of people who inherited fortunes.

Now, the Donald is not one of my favorite people, merely because of the comb-over; real men don’t need it. Even Trump Tower has a slight sense of plastic to it, to me, and I’ve been in that board room.

But he speaks cogently about the subjects in the interview. Isn’t that the point?

Is it not possible for someone with money to say something that makes sense (cents)? Is wisdom reserved for the poor?

Another comment makes the case (what case?) that the Donald has made and lost a lot of money over time. I’m sure the Donald would agree. I’m not sure how that is an example of what’s “wrong” with our economic system, though. The opportunity to make and lose money is, too simplistically but close, the actual foundation of our system.

Who’s begrudging someone the chance to make money? Well, some are. They think they should have a piece of everybody else’s pie sliced off for them and sent to them every month so they don’t have to worry about buying gas or paying for NetFlix.

Yet, it’s the opportunity to LOSE money that we’re talking about in the current crisis. The government (meaning those supposedly running it at the moment — though it looks much more like it’s running them) is proving incapable of standing behind capitalism when it operates to correct economic errors, mistakes and, yes, fraud.

This government seems to think that it is the government’s responsibility to stop the harsh, stark realities of the market, to make the hurt go away. Economic hurt DOES NOT GO AWAY. It’s a zero sum game, folks.

The hurt is merely moved somewhere else.

Do the people who want a slice of the pie want a slice of the losses suffered every day by entrepreneurs in America as well?

In this case, to future generations and current taxpayers (supposedly the “rich” but it’s going much farther down the totem pole than that in the end).

In trying to stop the flood from topping the dam by pouring more water into the upstream river (tell me how that makes sense), these fools may well succeed in drowning what we used to think of as America.

It seems to me that the Donald gets it.

Why is that a problem?

His hair; now that is a problem, but not what’s inside his head.

Final point. Think about this.

If Barack Obama were a contestant on The Apprentice, do you think for a second that DT would hire him?

I don’t think so. So, let’s elect Don Trump President (insane thought, I know, but it would definitely be interesting) and send BHO back to school, or back to Chicago, who cares. Then Donald could fill his cabinet through a prime time network show, The Cabinet, running from the election to inauguration day, with the audience getting to call and e-mail their votes.

Now, THAT would be cool.

And probably better for the nation.

Yeah, through not much fault from him! He was just a shareholder and a board of director in Trump Casinos. Not the owner of it! The CEO and the rest of the board is what sank Trump Casinos. He resigned from the board in disgust….

Trump has managed to build and/or buy several homes, hotels, golf courses, and casinos. As well as constructing entire buildings.

Exactly how many homes has Obama bought…..without the help of Rezko?

And as far as casinos having a tough time right now….lol….you do realize gambling isn’t a necessity?

I would vote for Trump over Obama…lol

One of the things he mentioned was DIPS financing with the auto co. Basically, what that means is that “we own you until you can make yourself financially solvent,” as in that is what we SHOULD have done with Detroit.

It certainly makes more sense than just throwing money at the same people who ran it down in the first place…

Good point about the selling of the name….forgot about that.

he did not own those casinos.

great idea!!

IndieDog – BRAVO!

Thanks for the post AGII.

Enjoyed it, though I don’t necessarily agree with all of his comments. Especially regarding stuffing the banks. But its interesting hear a “big player” (vs. insider) perspective. Something we average American’s haven’t seen & heard much.