Is Trump Trying To Manipulate The Economy To Benefit Himself? Of Course He Is!

Would Trump put his own personal interests ahead of the country's interests? If anyone doesn't know the answer to that, it's useless trying to persuade them. In truth, if Trump could gain a quarter by costing the U.S. a billion, he would jump at it. Trump will sell us out to our enemies in a blink of an eye. The former president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, is on trial now for, among other things,  taking $90 million in bribes from Saudi Arabia's thuggish crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, a crony and ally of Trump and his vile family. If Bin Salman was willing to give $90 million to the useless al-Bashir how much has he been willing to give the Trumps and Kushners? Is Trump on the take? You really have to ask? It's why Trump can't be allowed to slink off after his term and must be prosecuted, The precedents he has broken and set have to be expunged from our history or we will be doomed, as a nation and a society, to live with them forever. No other American ex-president has ever been imprisoned. Trump must be. (It's another reason to not vote for Biden, who will immediately pardon Trump and his family and regime if he ever gets into the White House.)

Over the weekend, the Washington Post assembled an A-Team to work on how Trump puts his own financial interests ahead of the country's well-being-- Jonathan O'Connell, David Farenthold and Heather Long. Short version: Señor Trumpanzee "stands to save millions of dollars annually in interest on outstanding loans on his hotels and resorts if the Federal Reserve lowers rates as he has been demanding." We'll get into it in a moment, but first I want to ask you if you saw the write-up I did Sunday of Benjamin Corey's thesis that Trump really is the Anti-Christ. Here are a couple of illustrations that connect Corey's theory and The Post theory:

Trump's Miami area golf resort, Doral, is a decrepit pigsty badly in need of renovations. Trump wants to host the next G-7 meeting there in 2020 so he can give the bill for the renovations to the U.S. taxpayers. That's who he is; it's who he's always been. A clue he is looking to profit was a statement he made earlier today: "My people wanted it. I'm not going to make any money." That can be translated into, "My staff warned me not to do anything this blatant but I want to soak Uncle Sam for every penny I can while I'm still able to."

Now, back to O'Connell, Farenthold and Long, who explained that "In the five years before he became president, Trump borrowed more than $360 million via four loans from Deutsche Bank for his hotels in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, as well his 643-room Doral golf resort in South Florida. The payments on all four properties vary with interest rate changes, according to Trump’s official financial disclosures. That means he has already benefited from falling interest rates that were spurred in part by a cut the Federal Reserve announced in July, the first in more than a decade-- and his payments could drop by millions of dollars more annually if the central bank grants Trump’s wish and further lowers short-term rates, experts said."

“It will reduce his borrowing costs quite a bit if he gets what he wants,” said Phillip Braun, a finance professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Braun said Trump’s savings could be even greater if Deutsche Bank permits his company to pay down the loans more quickly without a penalty, which banks sometimes allow.

...While Trump’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are managing the family business, the president insisted on retaining ownership of his company after his election, bucking the practice of past presidents. That decision, ethics experts warned, would lead to potential conflicts of interest between his personal interests and public policy goals.

The Trump administration has argued that lower interest rates would spur more consumers to buy homes and cars and businesses to invest in new factories. Cutting rates also typically lowers the value of the dollar, making U.S. products cheaper to overseas buyers, a goal of the president.

But most economists and business leaders say Trump’s trade war is the biggest threat to the economy, not interest rates, which are already at historically low levels.

Since taking office, Trump has aggressively sought to lower interest rates and rejected  the mostly hands-off approach other presidents have taken to the Fed, repeatedly blasting Chair Jerome H. Powell-- whom Trump appointed to the post last year-- for not falling in line.

On Friday, after Powell made no announcement of a rate cut and instead voiced concerns about Trump’s trade war with China, the president immediately attacked him on Twitter, writing that “As usual the Fed did NOTHING!” and comparing Powell to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” Trump posted.

Trump and his advisers have privately discussed creating a rotation among the Federal Reserve governors that would reduce Powell’s influence, the Washington Post reported this past week.

Asked Friday night by reporters if he wanted Powell to resign, the president responded, “If he did, I wouldn’t stop him.”

...Experts said it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how much Trump would save if he gets the reduction in short-term interest rates that he has urged, from 2.25 percent to 1.25 percent-- a move typically reserved for economic emergencies.

But the president would be substantially impacted by a rate cut, they agreed.

Beginning in 2012, Deutsche Bank provide Trump’s company with about $364 million in loans by working through the bank’s private wealth division, rather than through traditional commercial lending units, according to public loan documents.

The borrowing was for two loans totaling $125 million to buy and renovate the Doral golf resort in Florida, a $170 million loan to renovate Washington’s Old Post Office Pavilion into a Trump hotel and a $69 million loan to refinance an existing Trump hotel in Chicago.

Trump’s financial disclosures and loan records indicate that all four of the loans remain outstanding. His company has paid down at least $19 million of the Chicago loan, according to the filings, though the documents do not show the amount of the remaining balances for any of the properties.

Trump could save at least $600,000 and as much as $1.1 million annually on just the larger of the two Doral loans if the Fed made a percentage point reduction, depending on the loan agreement, according to Clifford Rossi, a professor at the University of Maryland’s business school.

Even a quarter-point reduction, which most Wall Street investors now predict will occur in mid-September, could save Trump as much as $275,000 annually on that single Doral loan.

“If you’re a consumer borrower with a car loan or a credit card, a quarter-point reduction is significant savings,” Rossi said. Trump “has more loans and a bigger dollar size, so he would get certainly a larger reduction on the amount owed than most Americans out there.”

An analysis by Bloomberg News found that for every quarter-point reduction, Trump could save $850,000 in annual interest rate payments, which would mean more than $3 million in annual savings if the Fed dropped rates a full percentage point as Trump has demanded.

During his years as a real estate developer, Trump was famous for his aggressive efforts to save money, even when it meant breaking up relationships or shattering professional norms.

Trump has been sued dozens of times for nonpayment of bills, by building contractors, bartenders and even his own lawyers. He used money from a nonprofit charity to pay off legal settlements for his for-profit businesses. He once sued his own lender, Deutsche Bank, to get out of a large mortgage.

Before entering politics, Trump often advocated for lower interest rates, which are key for a business that relies on large sums of debt.

“Interest rates are very critical to the real estate industry, and [Trump has] spent his whole career there, so he has strong opinions about where interest rates should be,” said James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Every real estate person I’ve ever met in my life has always wanted lower rates in all circumstances, so I think that’s part of [Trump’s] nature.”

In the 1980s, Trump became one of the most aggressive borrowers in the country, using cheap loans to finance an Atlantic City casino empire that ultimately failed and forced four of his companies to file for bankruptcy.

In the wake of that collapse, Trump was largely frozen out by big banks. He used cash to fund much of his company’s more recent real estate expansion, then turned to an increasingly risk-taking Deutsche Bank for some big loans starting in 2012...

Democrats in Congress have subpoenaed his Deutsche bank records, but Trump sued to stop the bank from responding and the matter remains mired in court.

Previous presidents have avoided publicly criticizing the Fed to maintain the board’s insulation from politics. Trump decided otherwise from the get-go and as global economic concerns mounted in recent weeks, he escalated his already routine attacks on Powell, tweeting at different times in July that “the Federal Reserve doesn’t have a clue!” and “They raised rates too soon, too often, and tightened, while others did just the opposite.”

Four former Fed chairs, collectively appointed and reappointed by six presidents, then published a Wall Street Journal op-ed urging that the Fed be allowed to act “free of short-term political pressures and, in particular, without the threat of removal or demotion of Fed leaders for political reasons.”

Trump further amped up the pressure Friday after Powell spoke at a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The chair said the U.S. economy was in a “favorable place” but that the trade war Trump launched against China had created a “complex, turbulent” situation.

Trump responded with a tirade on Twitter, blaming China for a boatload of issues and demanding that U.S. companies avoid doing business there. Stock market investors, already wary of a shaky bond market and declining consumer confidence, began a sell-off that resulted in steep market losses.

Braun, the Northwestern professor, said Trump’s constant pressure on the Fed chair and his colleagues to adjust rates to suit the president’s liking could hurt the U.S. economy.

“I don’t think the Fed should be accommodating Trump’s trade war, and the risk is potential inflation and the reputation of the Fed in the future,” he said.