Lewis Black - Black To The Future
Funny thing? He almost certainly did it on purpose.
And I don’t mean that as “actually he knows what he’s doing.” I mean it as “he has been committing one of the longest running and most blatant cases of fraud in the history of business and it’s only due to the limitations of our legal system that his entire business history is not classified as a Ponzi Scheme.”
Because he didn’t just bankrupt a casino.
He bought two casinos in Atlantic city, exaggerated the shit out of their profits to lure in investors, and began work on building a third casino. He was overextended in the market in a way that had him competing against his own businesses. He also snubbed contractors, threatened and litigated a ton of small businesses out of their jobs, and raised capital through issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in junk bonds (high risk high reward, they’re below investment grade but some people like to bet on them because the interest rate in the case of a payout is very large).
So what happened? He leveraged his ownership in a way that allowed him to strip out a ton of assets (which he legally owned), while leaving the corporate side totally overloaded with debt financing from the junk bonds, and then he drove all of it into the ground. Hard.
He went to bankruptcy court like 3 separate times over casino projects. While in bankruptcy court, he relentlessly fled from personal liability (his equity stake in the companies was extremely minimal because of the debt financing strategy) and managed to pay back a tiny fraction of his actual debt (this is why he always handles his debt in bankruptcy court; you can get away with paying back pennies on the dollar when you supposedly have no money). He also issued like 300 million more in junk bonds to pay himself and his legal fees, then went back to bankruptcy court and frauded all of THOSE investors.
Now you’ve probably heard the term Ponzi Scheme before, but if you’ve never heard a proper explanation of how one works, here’s a basic breakdown. First, you borrow money from one investor. Then, you borrow money from a second investor, and use that money to pay back the first investor at an impressive interest rate. Then you can start selling the scam to people by showing them how good your investors are doing, and hook more people in. You pay back earlier investors with the influx of cash from the new ones, while raking in the profits for yourself.
Now think about this business model. Use debt financing to start up a business. Litigate, fraud, or drive your contractors out of business so they don’t have enough money to sue you for what you owe them. Leverage the capital structure so you have minimal liability personally invested in the company. Strip out assets before a collapse because hey, you own it. Raise more debt capital to keep the illusion running as long as you can, and when you can’t keep up with what you owe your investors anymore, file for bankruptcy and pay them back scraps. You’ve made a ton of money, frauded a ton of investors, and they can’t come after you for it because you were leveraged behind a corporation and your personal liability was very small. You make more money off a flop than a hit. Rinse and repeat.
BUT YOU CAN’T GET CAUGHT FOR SETTING UP A PYRAMID SCHEME BECAUSE IT DOESN’T LAST LONG ENOUGH. YOU NEVER SET UP THE CYCLE OF INVESTORS AND INSTEAD YOU GET OUT OF PAYING THEM BACK BY ACTING LIKE YOUR BUSINESS WAS AN ORDINARY FAILURE INSTEAD OF BY STEALING MONEY FROM SUBSEQUENT INVESTORS.
That’s what happened in Atlantic City.
Now think about the rest of his business failures. Trump Airlines? That’s an industry that requires huge startup investment (debt financing) and the owner gets to sell off expensive assets when it fails. Trump Steaks? He sold those at THE SHARPER IMAGE, where it was guaranteed to fail because it was completely the wrong market for that kind of business. Trump University? Never even TRIED to be successful with that, he just tricked people into giving him as much money as he could squeeze out of them, and provided no actual service in exchange. He paid a $25 Million settlement on the lawsuit, but MADE $175 Million off the actual scam, so he walked away with $150 million for doing absolutely nothing. A LOT of his businesses, if you look closely, were practically DESIGNED to fail.
Because that’s how he operates.
Donald Trump is not a good businessman. He never even tried to be a businessman. What he is, is a con artist. Everything he ever made was fake.
The only really successful business he owns is the real estate business … which he inherited from his father and has grown at a slower rate than inflation even as he drives contractors out of business and targets undocumented laborers so they have no legal grounds to sue him for fair wages or working conditions.
Donald Trump is the CEO equivalent of The Producers.
Further reading and WILDLY paraphrased (from memory, from last year) source for the above commentary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html
