You make Little Orphan Annie Look Like Niccolò Machiavelli

The Washington Post just had a story about an anomaly in Trump's real estate business.

Specifically, in 2006, after anumber of bankruptcies and cash flow crises, Trump began buying properties with cash:

In the nine years before he ran for president, Donald Trump’s company spent more than $400 million in cash on new properties — including 14 transactions paid for in full, without borrowing from banks — during a buying binge that defied real estate industry practices and Trump’s own history as the self-described “King of Debt.”

Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances.

It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry.

Why did the “King of Debt,” as he has called himself in interviews, turn away from that strategy, defying the real estate wisdom that it’s unwise to risk so much of one’s own money in a few projects?

………

Eric Trump, a son of the president who helps manage the company, told The Washington Post that none of the cash used to purchase the 14 properties came from outside investors or from selling off major Trump Organization assets.

Instead, Eric Trump said, the firm’s existing businesses — commercial buildings in New York, licensing deals for Trump-branded hotels and clothes — produced so much cash that the Trumps could tap that flow for spending money.

Yeah. There is so much money in Trump brand steaks, and Trump brand wine, and Trump brand tortilla chips, and Trump brand condoms.

“When Trump invests in a real estate project, he typically puts up less of his own money than you might think,” Ross wrote, explaining how Trump followed this rule. “Typically, his investors in the project will put up 85 percent while Trump puts up 15 percent.”

Then in 2006, the same year Ross’s book was published, Trump changed his approach.

He began buying up land near Aberdeen, on Scotland’s North Sea coast. Trump ultimately paid $12.6 million for the property. He’s spent at least $50 million more to build a golf course there, which was wrapped up in land-use fights and didn’t open until 2012.

“Even his closest senior advisers in NYC were surprised” that Trump paid cash, recounted Neil Hobday, a British developer who worked on the Aberdeen project with Trump.

Professional real estate developers avoid spending their own money: There are simply too many subsidies out there for excessive leverage.

The obvious conclusion is that someone wanted to launder money through real-estate, my guess would be Russian Oligarchs, because Trump is likely too racist to take money from non-white 3^rd world despots.

This is what one of the authors of this story, David Farenthold, alluded to in a tweet:

Q1: Why did @realDonaldTrump make this change at that moment? @erictrump says it was an aversion to debt itself. But real estate is a debt business. Borrowing spreads out risk, lets you diversify investments, has tax benefits. As true in '06 as in '86.

— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) May 7, 2018

He's suggesting, that Trump is mobbed up and laundering money, something that I described as pretty damn obvious about a year ago.

It's an innocuous tweet, until Eric Lipton, who is not just a New York Times reporter, but one who just won a f%$# Pulitzer for stories on Russian political meddling, tweeting what might bet the stupidest tweet this side of Kanye West:

My take on this, is it reflects the rise of Eric and Don Jr as executives at the company, who were more debt averse, having watched their dad go bankrupt by overextended himself. They shifted to a more cash-based business. https://t.co/c0nKhcGiv2

— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) May 7, 2018

Seriously, you are writing money on Russian criminals creating influence around the world, and you are suggesting that Donald Trump "just Decided" to start spending cash?

Dude, this is your f%$#ing beat, and you are THIS f%$#ing clueless?

I hope that someone cuts your meat for you, because you should not be allowed around sharp objects.

Hell, we should keep you away from spoons.

H/t Duncan Black.