Times Up, Prez Ponzi. Tick Tock, M.F.
So I think I have an original thought that Trump in the WH is one giant Ponzi scheme.
Luckily, Google exists to let me know I am hardly the first to think this!
Candidate Ponzi- March 2016
Trump's Ponzi Scheme by Ron Fournier w/ The Atlantic
The real-estate mogul is running on his business record—but it shows the same flaws as his campaign itself.
...But if you take a closer look, I think you’ll find that Donald Trump’s presidential record is just like his actual business record: exploiting the hopes and fears of Americans by promising huge rewards, without any practical plan for delivering them. It’s a political Ponzi scheme.
What got me thinking today was this story in the Washington Post about one of Trump’s many failed business ventures: “The Trump Network sought to make people rich, but left behind disappointment.” It’s just the latest in a series of stories you can find online about Trump duping hard-working people like you. And a close read offers disturbing parallels between Trump’s business record, and his campaign.
...You’re investing your hopes in a guy who bragged about the benefits of deception in “The Art of the Deal,” and whose record of lies as a candidate may inoculate Hillary Clinton against the untrustworthiness bug. I am not telling you how to vote. I am begging you to recognize this next sentence as a fact, not an opinion: Donald Trump is a habitual liar. www.theatlantic.com/...
Prez Ponzi- Year 1
Sept 2017
The President Is a Ponzi Scheme
Here and abroad, Trump's wealthy backers understand that his populist rhetoric is a masquerade.
...What Trump seems to want is to put into place agreements that benefit himself and his friends, regardless of the consequences.
After all, that’s what a Ponzi scheme is all about. It has nothing to do with economics,
even though its creators often employ the jargon of the profession. It is designed to take the money out of your pocket and put it into the pockets of others. Only when people lose confidence in the scheme — either the ones who truly believe in it or the ones who don’t but figure they can score a quick buck — does it collapse.
Most Ponzi schemes run through the available pool of capital relatively quickly, and then the organizers try to abscond with the loot and leave the debt behind. Unfortunately, Trump has at his disposal a huge amount of capital, and he can cause enormous damage as he implements his scheme. The question is not if but when, and whether the president attempts to pardon himself just before he steps out the back with his Capitol gains. ips-dc.org/...
Nov 2017
“IT’S A PONZI SCHEME”: WALL STREET FEARS TRUMP’S DERANGED TAX PLAN
COULD KICK OFF ECONOMIC EUTHANASIA by WILLIAM D. COHAN w Vanity Fair
Wall Street vets say an attack on blue states could start a chain reaction in the housing market. “Will this be the first tax cut in American history that actually results in a recession?”
...If Cohn were being more honest, he’d admit what most chief executives are saying privately, and some publicly. “The Trump team is arguing that massively cutting taxes for corporations will somehow translate into significant wage increases for working people,” David Mendels, the former C.E.O. of publicly traded software company Brightcove wrote last week. ““This argument fundamentally disregards everything we know about how companies actually decide to hire and how much to pay their employees. As a C.E.O. (and in previous roles) I was involved in hiring and determining salaries for thousands of people over 25 years. From real-world experience I can tell you that tax rates literally never came up in any discussion about hiring or pay levels.” Occam’s razor, he added, is the best rubric to predict what will happen when you give investors more money in the absence of increased demand: they’ll keep it.
...The word on the street, though, isn’t that higher corporate profits will lead to higher wages; rather, it’s all about buybacks: Goldman says stock buybacks will hit $590 billion in 2018, while Merrill Lynch predicts half of all repatriated cash would go to buybacks or acquisitions. It’s a sugar high that might extend the market rally temporarily, but will deepen the rot in our economic cavity. www.vanityfair.com/...
Nov 2017 Part 2
Donald Trump: A Lifelong Ponzi Scheme by James M. Ridgway, Jr.
Basically with a Ponzi scheme there is no there there.
This has always been the essence of Donald J. Trump’s entire master BS life. The Trump con of course was to convince banks and the sophisticated, along average Joes, that he is a super wealthy, highly successful businessman.
It didn’t matter that he was clueless about most things and therefore every venture was a failed venture, because on the other hand he was such a fantastic self-promoter (compulsive liar) that there was always some bank, international mobster organization or Russian sponsored agency willing to bail him out, but eventually all Ponzi Type Schemes come crashing down. Donald’s fatal mistake was in becoming president. Yes, ironically it is the panicle of his seeming success that will undo the Donald.
...The invincible one will soon be toast, for even the greatest Ponzi schemer of them all must end up the same as the rest. The hard [reality] for Mr. Trump is that there is no one left who cares to bail him out. Indeed, his Ponzi scheme has just about run its course. medium.com/...
Prez Ponzi- Year 2 Aug 2018
Trump has built a pyramid scheme of public fraud. It's a taxpayer-backed cash grab.
Donald Trump is pulling off a taxpayer-backed cash grab. It's an orchestrated, unprecedented scheme to enrich a president, his family and his friends.
… As with his Cabinet officials, he expects that the allure of taxpayer-funded kickbacks will be enough to keep farmers from holding him accountable for his own corruption and failures. It’s not an accident; it’s a strategy: Grease the wheels of government so heavily that they spin in place.
Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his coterie of grifters, fraudsters and co-conspirators have filled it in entirely, dividing the land into personal fiefdoms to exploit.
But before despair sets in, the last article ends with this—
It’s disturbing to see the president ripping this page from the authoritarian textbook, though entirely in character. All around him, he has traded his blessing of corrupt dealings for a weakening of the agencies that might hold some check on him. Now, as key voters threaten to rebel over his policies, it’s only natural that he’d seek the same bargain with them.
But the American people aren’t so easily bought. We’ve already waged and won numerous battles against the president’s corruption, but our fight is far from over. We must reinvigorate the institutions of transparency and accountability in our government. We must hold our leaders to an even higher ethical standard. And, especially when it starts to feel fruitless, we must do so with Donald Trump.
www.usatoday.com/… [Bolding mine.]
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