The 1 Easy Way Donald Trump Could Have Been Even Richer: Doing Nothing

[muriel_volestrangler]

As “really rich” as Don­ald Trump is today, he might have been even rich­er if, in­stead of dab­bling in sky­scrapers and casi­nos, he’d simply taken his eight-fig­ure in­her­it­ance dec­ades ago and sunk it in­to the stock mar­ket.

Had the celebrity busi­ness­man and Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate in­ves­ted his even­tu­al share of his fath­er’s real-es­tate com­pany in­to a mu­tu­al fund of S&P 500 stocks in 1974, it would be worth nearly $3 bil­lion today, thanks to the mar­ket’s per­form­ance over the past four dec­ades. If he’d in­ves­ted the $200 mil­lion that For­bes magazine de­term­ined he was worth in 1982 in­to that in­dex fund, it would have grown to more than $8 bil­lion today.

Even the smal­ler fig­ure ex­ceeds the lower range of his pos­sible net worth as re­por­ted to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, while the lar­ger num­ber ex­ceeds by bil­lions re­cent es­tim­ates of Trump’s worth by fin­an­cial pub­lic­a­tions. And it would have come without the high-drama, roller-coast­er ca­reer that has in­cluded four cor­por­ate bank­ruptcies.

That a purely un­man­aged in­dex fund’s re­turn could out­per­form Trump’s hands-on wheel­ing and deal­ing calls in­to ques­tion one of Trump’s chief selling points on the cam­paign trail: his busi­ness acu­men.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/twentysixteen/2015/09/02/1-easy-way-donald-trump-could-have-been-even-richer-doing-nothing

More: http://www.vox.com/2015/9/2/9248963/donald-trump-index-fund

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I love how the various pundits have been trying to pass him off as a self-made man

using awkwardly constructed sentences to conflate Trump and his father, making it sound like Trump started with 'nothing', when he actually started out with close to $20 million of family money, iirc.

[noiretextatique]

5. it is so ridiculously insane

to claim this trust fund brat is somehow "earned" his money with hard work, etc. hell...if i had 20 million to start with, i'd be a gazillionaire too.

[Mass]

2. Good piece in general in that it tries to debunk the notion Trump is a self-made man.

The piece is some flaws, in the mathematical calculations (as Peter Orzag tweeted a few days ago, this would have meant he paid no inheritance taxes. In addition, I am not sure if anybody has bothered evaluating his lifestyle, but it is probably quite high).

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-03/should-donald-trump-have-indexed-

But the most important point is this one :

Ac­cord­ing to Trump’s fin­an­cial-dis­clos­ure state­ment, he has no more than $63 mil­lion in cash, money-mar­ket ac­counts, or sim­il­ar hold­ings, and as little as $13.1 mil­lion. He also has as much as $169 mil­lion and as little as $65 mil­lion in stocks, bonds, and sim­il­ar in­stru­ments. Everything else is tied up in real es­tate or air­craft, ac­cord­ing to the dis­clos­ure.

Trump based part of his campaign on the notion he does not need financial contributions from lobbyists and bankers, but this is bunk. His liquidities, according to this article, are around 300 millions. A lot of money for most people, but far from being enough for modern presidential campaigns (and I doubt he would want to spend everything).

Of course, the question is how to debunk this (and the fact his campaign manager is a former lobbyist, former Citizens United employee, ...) to the crowd of his faithful and not Bloomberg readers.

Because Trump is a flim-flam master artist that is excellent at obscuring reality. Stop looking at glimmer for a while and you will see the reality : he is no different than any mainstream republican.

[Warpy]

3. He's always been a shitty businessman

He's good at arm twisting and schmoozing and skirting regulations. However, his buildings are long on glitz and short on real quality, he's repeatedly either gone bankrupt on other people's money or has been voted off the Board of Directors of his enterprises because he's bankrupting them. These are not the characteristics of a good businessman. In addition, he's short tempered and thin skinned, lousy attributes for any sort of political office.

Most of his "really rich" consists of leveraging ability, not real wealth.

I am not impressed by Mr. Trump. He can kiss my vote goodbye because he's never going to get it.

[annabanana]

4. The Trump casino in Atlantic City was all lobby . .

The rooms were cheap and shabby

[Warpy]

6. Trump Tower in Manhattan was the same

and most people pulled out the builder's grade small kitchens and finishes before they moved in, replacing them with the stuff that should have been there in the first place.

He's trying to change that a little with his enormous tower in Vancouver, hiring his daughter to design the interiors. She's designing them according to fads that were on HGTV 8 years ago, dark even with bright can lights overhead. However dated, they're better than what you'd find in cheap suburban housing, which is his usual interior style.

[Human101948]

7. Warpy, are you an architect or designer?

Not a challenge, just wondering since you seem to have more knowledge about these things than most of us.

[Warpy]

8. No, just an online crank who loves to laugh at fads and bad design

which means keeping up with them. I've also read a lot of reviews of Trump's buildings and I've seen pictures of the sample units in Vancouver (he's quite proud of them).

All this stuff is online, so have a ball. Some of it is pretty funny.