| fatslob-:O said: What you described isn't a "true" blind trust which absolutely requires turning your assets into cash. It's just stupid to force Trump's business into a blind trust no matter what since there's almost no one who would amass billions in such a short time to buy his empire so he'd essentially have to hold a fire sale for most of his assets ... Not the whole Trump and Russia conspiracy theory again ... (This alone should disqualify your premise of the arugment.) Well, at least wealthier people are less likely to commit crimes ... Being in debt is NOT a good thing because you're now beholden to your creditors which raises conflicts of interests ... (It's like a caricature of china would say, "if you can't enslave entities with force, you can enslave them with debt". The american people are going to be so pissed when they find out their government can't pay back their debt.) |
A REIT or a partnership could and would buy the assets; he would then be compensated through the financing deal, through which he would have no material interest in the performance of the original asset. The "fire sale" aspect betrays an unfamilairity with the NY RE market, and other assets could easilt be collateralized into an SPV and sold to any of the potential aforementioned. If any assets were sold at a loss, I would suspect they are currently overvalued (which is and has been his wont). Finally, his total net worth is only about $4B, which is not substantial and not wholly comprised of his RE portfolio. SL Green, for context is worth $10.6B and is comprised wholly of its RE portfolio.
The Russia thing is not a conspiracy theory; I addressed this elsewhere, but I actually built the Trump Soho, work with his business associates, and have been the NY RE and financial industries for about 10 years now. The question is not if the conflict of interest exists; it's to what degree does it exist. Also, it takes only a little bit of research to corroborate these ties, and someone else has already done so in this very thread.
There are many studies like this, and they behoove you to decouple criminal behavior from criminal prosecution:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201304/the-rich-are-differently-moral
The founding fathers almost universally ended up in debt, because they were not out to enrish themselves. The office of the presidency pays $500K/year, which is 10 times the median household income in the US. Post-presidency, most presidents can make that amount for an hour or two of speaking. As far as indebtedness is concerned here, you should be more concerned about who has invested with Trump (including PACs) and what they expect of him or (worse yet) what he owes them:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/us/politics/donald-trump-international-business.html
