The DB that lent von Clownstick money an American corporate entity subject to American regulation. It’s not a trans-national “world bank” in the same sense that the shady HSBC is.
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Thanks. I mentally lumped them with HSBC.
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I know exactly how he’d spin it too.
Best Stable ever. Better than Jesus’
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Perhaps a dumb question - but what happens if all the properties Trump org claims to own are actually heavily mortgaged?
If the state appropriates these properties to sell - do they also have to deal with the debt?
I ask as a comical outcome would be Dump loses all the buildings but retains all the debt - without any means to generate revenue. Large scale defaults = bankruptcy?
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It’s so rare for any narcissist to get an unignorable comeuppance in their own lifetime. That alone is delicious.
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Probably endless lawsuits between the lenders and the state, enriching a generation of lawyers. All about who is first in line in an asset sale.
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Bit late, since that’s what the court has been doing since the summary judgement in September. The $355 million penalty(and additional $98 million in interest) isn’t an arbitrary fine or punitive damages, it’s a disgorgement. Kind of like restitution, but paid to the government instead of the parties who were defrauded. The amount is the court’s best estimate of how much the guilty party profited from their crimes.
If you want to read all the details, here’s a link to the full 92 page judgement(PDF).
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The state isn’t a bank. It wants cash in exchange for the bond. It takes property only as a last resort, but otherwise expects the individual to sell off assets to come up with the money. My guess is that when he’s not allowed to stall anymore with ridiculous pleading like this, he’ll have to sell off a few buildings to his in-laws the Kushners (awful in their own right) in the vain hope that he can buy them back later at the same price once he becomes dictator. A one-sided “merger” between the companies is almost inevitable.
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ok - but if he sells off these assets wouldn’t the lenders be first in line?
If so - he’ll need to sell more assets to come up with actual cash - which I find incredibly amusing.
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He’ll only be selling off his equity in the buildings.
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Perhaps the Public Investment Fund will develop a sudden enthusiasm for New York real estate.
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That, and (depending on the fine print) I am guessing (haven’t actually heard) that his loans could be cancelled, i.e. due immediately. Or maybe that’s just how they treat the 99%.
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I thought everyone need to pay their bill, said certain convicted rapist and fraudster.
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Not a dumb question at all!
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First, functionally all big real estate developments like this are leveraged, often at 80% – rarely below 60% – and my guess is that Trump is on the high side of that. So he’s got the following problem: the lenders get paid first.. The lenders get paid everything first. So if he has a $100MM building where there’s an $80MM note on it – if he sold the building in 2019 at $100MM – the lenders get their $80MM and he gets his $20MM. If, in this lousy market, he can only get $85MM for it – the lenders get $80MM and he gets $5MM. So now he’s got to sell a lot of property to raise the cash he needs.
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The government could seize the property, sure, as part of a judgment, but the government’s interest is still subordinated to the lenders rights – the lenders haven’t done anything wrong here – and then the government has to negotiate with the lenders to sell the building. Trump could potentially negotiate with the government about what the current value of his equity is if he were to assign his rights to one or more properties to satisfy a judgment, but he’s not getting anything close to what he has the value booked as (this is part of his overstating his assets, after all). And I don’t think the Great State of New York is very keen on making this easy on Trump. So that’s an unlikely scenario, but possible.
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The debt on the buildings is not going to be personally hung on Trump – real estate loans are very rarely full recourse loans – the building is the sole collateral.
That all said, Trump could be looking down the barrel of a debt spiral here – he’s very tight on cash, which means he’s likely to start defaulting on properties – to keep up with his other debts, he’s got to sell – but the buyers know he’s got to sell, so there’s a lot of downward pressure on the price even in a good market (and the market is deeply shitty right now) which makes it harder to keep up with everything else (not least his appearances). And while you can keep borrowing more and more at higher interest rates from someone that simply can’t go on forever.
I think it was John Steinbeck who said it: “Everyone goes broke two ways: first slowly, and then all at once.”
Here’s hoping.
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Can’t he just inflate his feeling of self-worth and settle his debts? Donald Trump’s Net Worth Is Determined by How He Feels That Day
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And a particularly stupid citizen at that.
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If it comes to that, he’ll be glad not to own, or be in, any tall buildings.
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