Political Posts

[John Hjorth]

U.S. Department of the Treasury - News - Press Releases [April 30^th 2025] : Treasury Announces Agreement to Establish United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.

 

Any complaints about sources etc. here, Greg?

[Hektor]

13 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

U.S. Department of the Treasury - News - Press Releases [April 30^th 2025] : Treasury Announces Agreement to Establish United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.

+1

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/world/europe/ukraine-minerals-deal-trump.html

 

Ukraine and U.S. Sign Economic and Reconstruction Deal

The deal is intended to give the U.S. access to proceeds from Ukraine’s reserves of rare earth minerals.

 

The United States and Ukraine announced on Wednesday the creation of a new reconstruction and investment fund, formalizing an economic agreement between the two countries that is intended to give the U.S. access to proceeds from Ukraine’s reserves of rare earth minerals.

 

The agreement concludes months of fraught negotiations over whether the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with economic and military support as it tries to broker an end to its war with Russia. The economic agreement is intended to provide Ukraine with an implicit security arrangement while addressing President Trump’s concerns that the U.S. has provided Kyiv with a blank check.

 

“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine.”

 

He added: “And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

[Parsad]

14 hours ago, thepupil said:

my point is, I assume we're looking at mostly the same "facts" (his business record/how that was built) and come to a vastly different conclusion.

 

but the "facts" themselves are quite murky an to be disputed by either side. 

 

I don't think if we had "full information" a systematic factual record of all his dealings from birth to present, we'd agree on the interpretation. 

 

so to a degree it's all kind of pointless..but we knew that

 

 

 

+1!  Cheers!

[Parsad]

12 hours ago, Blake Hampton said:

Kamala would've been facing the exact same problems as Trump is dealing with now. My concern is that Trump may have made those problems even worse.

 

Maybe that's why so many members of the current administration seem so economically incompetent. If they'd truly understood the scale of what was happening, they would've never taken the job in the first place.

 

No, we had record low unemployment, an economy growing slightly better than 2%, no tariffs, stock market much higher (that matters here nor there for me, but it is fact)...yes, huge illegal immigration problems, wars, divided country...but most of Trump's problems so far are completely self-inflicted.  No one else is really to blame.  Cheers!

[Parsad]

12 hours ago, changegonnacome said:

 

I kind of agree but only because the democrats still have a populated enough centrist element to them - the Republican party has been hollowed out of centrists over the course of the Trumpification of the GOP which is coming up on a decade now........and so Congress provides very little to any checks on the President (as the constituent envisioned)......Kamala might not have been a rocket scientist.....but if she pulled some of the dumb stuff Trump is now the House/Senate Democrats would have literally shut her down in her microseconds.....the compliancy of the House and Senate Republicans is quite scary as Captain Chaos does one dumb thing after another during this trade debacle.

+1!  Cheers!

[lnofeisone]

 

15 hours ago, 73 Reds said:

Trump's only been winning all his life - often against long odds.

Bankrupting casinos is a hella win...against long odds. 

[lnofeisone]

On 4/29/2025 at 8:21 PM, Gregmal said:

Typical Trump, start out crazy and over the top, and walk it way back and settle for small victories that can be touted as big ones. 

A plan would have measurable goals, strategies, an approach to execution, and risk mitigation. What we are experiencing is more like a spray-and-pray. I am very skeptical that there are measurable goals, tailored strategies, and any risk mitigation. The situation with China is an obvious demonstration of that. 

 

It's very clear to me that Trump has no plan, and the little he does only hurts the country (like liberating 20,000 UPS workers from their jobs - https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tariffs-liberate-20000-ups-workers-from-their-jobs/). I'm trading accordingly. 

[Gregmal]

32 minutes ago, lnofeisone said:

 

Bankrupting casinos is a hella win...against long odds. 

Ok so this is one of the key go to’s for some folks. My question is, haven’t plenty of casinos had this happen or come close? Like isn’t Caesar’s a poster child for this? Didn’t Carl Icahn have involvement in some of it? Isn’t the classic retort for casinos that they’re cyclical?

 

Also on the same front, don’t plenty of people whom seemingly detest Trump and consider him a loser in terms of business acumen happily own Brookfield? An entity that basically mirrors the Trump strategy? One that lacks shame in happily walking from underperforming assets? That levers everything to the gills? That’s mastered the use of non recourse debt and LLCs established to hang their greed on someone else? Isn’t that somewhat hysterical that on one hand they detest Trump doing it, but seemingly find the same behavior acceptable for their own investment? 

Edited May 1, 2025 by Gregmal

[Parsad]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

Ok so this is one of the key go to’s for some folks. My question is, haven’t plenty of casinos had this happen or come close? Like isn’t Caesar’s a poster child for this? Didn’t Carl Icahn have involvement in some of it? Isn’t the classic retort for casinos that they’re cyclical?

 

Also on the same front, don’t plenty of people whom seemingly detest Trump and consider him a loser in terms of business acumen happily own Brookfield? An entity that basically mirrors the Trump strategy? One that lacks shame in happily walking from underperforming assets? That levers everything to the gills? That’s mastered the use of non recourse debt and LLCs established to hang their greed on someone else? Isn’t that somewhat hysterical that on one hand they detest Trump doing it, but seemingly find the same behavior acceptable for their own investment? 

 

Trump University...Trump Hotels in Toronto and Vancouver...New Jersey Generals...Trump Shuttle...Trump Vodka...Trump Mortgage LLC...Trump Travel (GoTrump.com)...Trump Steaks...4,000 legal actions...6 business bankruptcies...and he keeps rockin' out to "YMCA".  Young man!  Cheers!

[Gregmal]

4 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

Trump University...Trump Hotels in Toronto and Vancouver...New Jersey Generals...Trump Shuttle...Trump Vodka...Trump Mortgage LLC...Trump Travel (GoTrump.com)...Trump Steaks...4,000 legal actions...6 business bankruptcies...and he keeps rockin' out to "YMCA".  Young man!  Cheers!

Sure, I get that he has an incredibly low bar and will put his name on absolutely anything to make money, even a shitcoin….but this doesn’t answer my question at all.

[Blake Hampton]

7 hours ago, Parsad said:

No, we had record low unemployment, an economy growing slightly better than 2%, no tariffs, stock market much higher (that matters here nor there for me, but it is fact)...yes, huge illegal immigration problems, wars, divided country...but most of Trump's problems so far are completely self-inflicted.  No one else is really to blame.  Cheers!

 

I agree that he's caused a lot of self-inflicted problems. That said, I also believe there are deep, systemic issues at play that go far beyond either political party. I'm almost certain that if Kamala were elected—and for the record, I did vote for her—she’d be facing serious challenges, many of which I think Trump is going to face as well.

 

The analogy that comes to mind is that the U.S. chose to shoot itself in the leg, not realizing it already has stage 3 cancer.

 

These problems are massive—somehow even bigger than Trump’s ego.

 

I live in Oklahoma. I drove an hour and a half to vote for Harris, knowing full well a Democrat hasn’t won our state’s electoral vote since LBJ in 1964. And the Democrats back then were much closer to today’s Republicans. I hate Trump that much.

 

Edited May 1, 2025 by Blake Hampton

[thepupil]

5 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Ok so this is one of the key go to’s for some folks. My question is, haven’t plenty of casinos had this happen or come close? Like isn’t Caesar’s a poster child for this? Didn’t Carl Icahn have involvement in some of it? Isn’t the classic retort for casinos that they’re cyclical?

 

Also on the same front, don’t plenty of people whom seemingly detest Trump and consider him a loser in terms of business acumen happily own Brookfield? An entity that basically mirrors the Trump strategy? One that lacks shame in happily walking from underperforming assets? That levers everything to the gills? That’s mastered the use of non recourse debt and LLCs established to hang their greed on someone else? Isn’t that somewhat hysterical that on one hand they detest Trump doing it, but seemingly find the same behavior acceptable for their own investment? 

I regard this to be a false equivalence.

 

Trump’s investments failed so many times, he was blacklisted by the banks (except DB, who apparently waited til Jan 6th). Brookfield, despite all its flaws and mistakes actually has a consolidated track record of people

giving them money and those same people having more of it at the end. There are people for whom Brookfield has created value. I am not aware of a long list of skimped contractors and unpaid bills at Brookfield. Obviously Brookfield sends plenty of jingle mail, but I think their rate of not paying g contractors would be orders of magnitude lower than trumps. 
 

again all this is with imperfect info, we don’t have the audited financials of the trump organization. 

 

trump has had a lot of success as a media personality and builder of a brand. 
 

 

if America actually wanted a successful investor/businessman, we’d have elected Romney. Early Bain funds’ IRR’s were incredible. We could have a moral debate regarding the methods but the result was crystal clear. 

[thepupil]

When Brookfield sends in jingle mail, they’re not violating their contractual agreements. The lender (usually CMBS) understands that was a risk. OTOH the trail of legal actions throughout his career would suggest otherwise for Trump.

[Gregmal]

15 minutes ago, thepupil said:

I regard this to be a false equivalence.

 

Trump’s investments failed so many times, he was blacklisted by the banks (except DB, who apparently waited til Jan 6th). Brookfield, despite all its flaws and mistakes actually has a consolidated track record of people

giving them money and those same people having more of it at the end. There are people for whom Brookfield has created value. I am not aware of a long list of skimped contractors and unpaid bills at Brookfield. Obviously Brookfield sends plenty of jingle mail, but I think their rate of not paying g contractors would be orders of magnitude lower than trumps. 
 

again all this is with imperfect info, we don’t have the audited financials of the trump organization. 

 

trump has had a lot of success as a media personality and builder of a brand. 
 

 

if America actually wanted a successful investor/businessman, we’d have elected Romney. Early Bain funds’ IRR’s were incredible. We could have a moral debate regarding the methods but the result was crystal clear. 

So Brookfield as a publicly traded entity has more filed financials(sometimes of questionable legitimacy) than Trump Org and that’s the basis for the conclusion that it doesn’t engage in similar tactics?
 

Trump has undoubtedly turned a large inherited amount of money into significantly more money. The slight I then often hear resembles something like “he didn’t outperform the index” or something to discredit it. And then I scroll down two topics and see the ghastly misrepresentations of Monish Pabrai’s worth and returns and just shrug.

 

General point is that people seem really invested in staking to this claim that Trumps finances are an illusion or that he’s inherited $50b and turned it into $3b or whatever when that’s clearly false. His tactics are certainly cheesy and sleazy and not my cup of tea, but not uncommon in the business world. Yet that gets ignored in terms of context. I really don’t believe people aren’t aware of Caesar’s bankruptcy or the fact that LLCs are used to basically bury risk and give the owner a way to walk from a potential obligation.

[Blake Hampton]

Source: What is Trump really worth? What we know about his business wealth—from real estate to crypto to Truth Social - Fortune

 

Edited May 1, 2025 by Blake Hampton

[thepupil]

I don’t regard the tactics as similar.

 

I pointed out that we have imperfect information as a caveat to my argument, not as evidence that the tactics are dissimilar. I’m uncomfortable in definitively concluding that Trump was a terrible real estate investor without full information. I don’t have a comprehensive IRR /MOIC of all his deals. How much money was granted to him and how many times was he bailed out by his dad versus how many times he actually brought something of value to the table or made a shrewd decision.
 

generally my hypothesis is he was a bad investor, he engaged in many unethical tactics (most notably just not paying people) and he repeatedly was bailed out by his (slumlord and many times investigated but actually very successful) father. 
 

he is undoubtedly a successful media personality and potentially the worlds most powerful and successful grifter. He reportedly and e$400mm from apprentice and his net worth is growing non linearly now that he’s in office and engaging in unabashed corruption. 
 

FWIW I have spoken to enough sharp elbowed distressed debt* guys who engage in all out courtroom war / zero sum games and who hold trump in such low regard relative to the their fellow vultures that I don’t think that my view is entirely outlandish. These are old timers with direct dealings with him.He’s a different breed of scum. 

Edited May 1, 2025 by thepupil

[Blake Hampton]

The majority of his wealth is in dogshit.

[Gregmal]

1 minute ago, Blake Hampton said:

The majority of his wealth is in dogshit.

I’m pretty sure he’s a debt guy….so I doubt he’s holding much cash.

[lnofeisone]

8 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Ok so this is one of the key go to’s for some folks. My question is, haven’t plenty of casinos had this happen or come close? Like isn’t Caesar’s a poster child for this? Didn’t Carl Icahn have involvement in some of it? Isn’t the classic retort for casinos that they’re cyclical?

 

Also on the same front, don’t plenty of people whom seemingly detest Trump and consider him a loser in terms of business acumen happily own Brookfield? An entity that basically mirrors the Trump strategy? One that lacks shame in happily walking from underperforming assets? That levers everything to the gills? That’s mastered the use of non recourse debt and LLCs established to hang their greed on someone else? Isn’t that somewhat hysterical that on one hand they detest Trump doing it, but seemingly find the same behavior acceptable for their own investment? 

It doesn't have to be one of the go tos. There is plenty of other ventures like trump shuttle, trump university, trump vodka, trump mortgage, gotrump.com (that's a oldie and goodie), trump steaks. Those are the failures, but he also has some great investments like 40 Wall Street, Trump Place, and of course The Apprentice. Normally, I would say "this dude is enterprising as hell" but in his case, his failed investments always uncover some element of fraud or very questionable behavior. And you are right, he is as ruthless as BN or APO are but that's where the similarity ends. 

 

BN or APO, while ruthless and probably pushing the law to the greatest extent possible,  maintains a pristine image. Trump's CFO pleaded guilty to 15 felony charges related to a tax-fraud scheme. Trump's accountants left him as a client and said their audit isn't something to be relied on. You think Trump didn't know what was happening?

 

And here is my issue with Trump. It is hard to tell what decisions and investments he makes are rational and which are fraudulent. This is what is getting carried over into the WH, except now he is the law enforcer, and he gets to abuse the executive order privilege. He is surrounded by idiots (e.g., Musk, Navarro, RFK...the list is long) with some wild ideas they are implementing. I'm sure Trump only cares as much as these ideas appease his base, but that's about it. The problem is that these ideas are becoming implemented as policies, and they impact the whole country. I said that Trump's "lean" gov't will cost more than our previous government. It's already showing up in the numbers. Trump's government worker layoff is having some serious ripple effects. This will start showing up around August/September. Tariffs? Huge joke. Our alliances? Huge joke. Retaining top scientific talent in the US? Huge joke. Anyway, I'm trading what the market gives me but this administration is a total dumpster fire and will set us back probably 20 years back economically, 20-50 years back on the scientific front, and maybe 5 years back on social issues. 

 

[changegonnacome]

9 hours ago, lnofeisone said:

Bankrupting casinos is a hella win...against long odds. 

 

Right - and I cant remember where I saw it but somebody took the assets Fred Trump left him (something on the order of $1bn in todays money).....and worked out, if he was such a good businessman, how the hell was the guy so relatively poor by the time he got signed up to play a businessman on TV (at the time the "Trump Org" as it was called had smaller headcount than local plumbing company).

 

Trump didn't compound capital through business acumen (his record here is terrible, possibly negative)......he did compound attention into fame to then play a businessman on TV which he then parlayed into the Presidency.....its a remarkable achievement no doubt about it..... but folks are mistaken when they think he's a great businessman......his superpower was spotting the emergence of the attention economy on the New York tabloid scene in the 80's, his great insight/genius is knowing that media needs narratives and characters to fill pages and the truth is malleable...when the twitter/facebook emerged later he was well prepared for the full scale attention economy....for example a good subset of real billionaires don't really want attention, they dont want to be on the Forbes rich list.....Trump told Forbes he was billionaire (when he wasnt) cause he did want attention and they needed someone to profile/interview.

 

Trump 1.0 had real business people around - Gary Cohn, Wilbur Ross, Steve Mnuchin - Trump 'faked it till he made it' all the way to the Presidency. Unchecked now by Congress/GOP don't be surprised when a country run by a fake successful businessman starts to underperform economically.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2025 by changegonnacome

[cubsfan]

Wow - TDS is back if full force today!

[changegonnacome]

1 hour ago, cubsfan said:

Wow - TDS is back if full force today!

 

As is TWS (trump worship syndrome).....we'll get our answer who's right in four years time.......think we can both agree cubs what a failed Presidency looks like based on numbers- 

 

- unemployment up

- inflation up

- SPY down

- growth below trend / recession

- annual fiscal deficit maintained at ~6-7% or increasing

- Debt to GDP growth continuation with acceleration

 

These things aren't a matter of opinion - 100 days is not a good yardtsick....but I think 6M report cards on the above are fairer....we'll get 8 such report cards on Captain Chaos who I may need to upgrade to Captain Mayhem if the trend in the numbers continue......look forward to his first six month report card sometime in July

[John Hjorth]

3 hours ago, thepupil said:

... FWIW I have spoken to enough sharp elbowed distressed debt* guys who engage in all out courtroom war / zero sum games and who hold trump in such low regard relative to the their fellow vultures that I don’t think that my view is entirely outlandish. These are old timers with direct dealings with him.He’s a different breed of scum. 

 

15 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

...These things aren't a matter of opinion - 100 days is not a good yardtsick....but I think 6M report cards on the above are fairer....we'll get 8 such report cards on Captain Chaos who I may need to upgrade to Captain Mayhem if the trend in the numbers continue......look forward to his first six month report card sometime in July

 

Awesome entertainment in this topic today, ... I can't stop laughing! 

[LC]

10 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

Trump University...Trump Hotels in Toronto and Vancouver...New Jersey Generals...Trump Shuttle...Trump Vodka...Trump Mortgage LLC...Trump Travel (GoTrump.com)...Trump Steaks...4,000 legal actions...6 business bankruptcies...and he keeps rockin' out to "YMCA".  Young man!  Cheers!

Let’s not forget the Trump Foundation! 
 

“Law enforcement investigators subsequently discovered various ethical and legal violations, including failure to register in New York, self-dealing and illegal campaign contributions.^[4][5][6] In December 2016, Trump tried to dissolve the foundation, but the New York State Attorney General's office blocked dissolution pending completion of its investigations”

[no_free_lunch]

1 hour ago, changegonnacome said:

 

As is TWS (trump worship syndrome).....we'll get our answer who's right in four years time.......think we can both agree cubs what a failed Presidency looks like based on numbers- 

 

- unemployment up

- inflation up

- SPY down

- growth below trend / recession

- annual fiscal deficit maintained at ~6-7% or increasing

- Debt to GDP growth continuation with acceleration

 

These things aren't a matter of opinion - 100 days is not a good yardtsick....but I think 6M report cards on the above are fairer....we'll get 8 such report cards on Captain Chaos who I may need to upgrade to Captain Mayhem if the trend in the numbers continue......look forward to his first six month report card sometime in July

So I am a bit of a trump fan but I will admit there are a few truths here.  Things I think you are ignoring include that he has only been in power for 3 months and you are talking stats that lag significantly.  Many of the issues around debt were done under Biden so you are insulting Democrats.  The reforms that are needed are being blocked by Dem judges.

 

If we really want to criticize trump we need to wait to the end of his term and let him carry out his mandate in the meantime, at least for the economic issues.  If we are to criticize him maybe you can explain why every other country in the world, Canada, EU, almost any country except maybe Norway, is such a shit show.  What is the common denominator there.. it is socialism.  Trump is trying to walk the line between socialism and staying elected and he should be criticized for some of his leftist stances but then what alternative do you provide?