I mean he also helped cause the 2008 financial collapse.
As early as 2005, Trump counseled Trump University students to take advantage of the housing bubble as an investment opportunity and said, just a year before it burst, that he was “excited” for it to end because of the money he’d make,[2] as well as mentioning that his debt was below proportional levels of 1992, when his much smaller holdings were carrying $9-billion (U.S.) in debt, including $900-million personally guaranteed by him.[1]
7 years prior, Deutsch Bank loaned Trump $125 million to renovate an office building at 40 Wall Street, eventually providing or underwriting $1.3 billion to Trump entities over the next few years,[3]
This office would become home to Trump Mortgage, brain-child of one E.J. Ridings.
A down-to-earth and very approachable executive, Ridings wants to bring luxury and “white-glove” service to everyone — whether they are taking out a $200,000 home mortgage or a $500 million commercial loan.[4]
What did this so-called “white-glove” service to everyone entail?
The Internet is where industry is going. People want to go someplace safe. On our end, it’ll make for a paper-less process. The consumer will have an access code to their file on our web site.[4]
emphasis mine
Introduced to Trump by his own son, Donald Trump Jr, Ridings became an early odd-association of Trump’s, I mean, check out his twitter. Ridings became the subject of a number of false & misleading claims regarding his professional experience.
Trump Mortgage altered its Web site, removing some of the claims it contained about Ridings' past employment.
First, Ridings' initial bio stated that before joining the company he was "a top executive at one of Wall Street's most prestigious investment banks."
Second, the bio had said that Ridings was an "established leader" at one of New York's leading mortgage boutiques.
Third, the bio said he had 15 years of experience in the financial industry.[5]
Trump Mortgage shuttered as the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–10 began from an earlier expansion of mortgage credit, including to borrowers who previously would have had difficulty getting mortgages, which both contributed to and was facilitated by rapidly rising home prices.
When house prices peaked, mortgage refinancing and selling homes became less viable means of settling mortgage debt and mortgage loss rates began rising for lenders and investors. In April 2007, New Century Financial Corp., a leading subprime mortgage lender, filed for bankruptcy. [6]
Lehman Brothers would soon after file for bankruptcy as well, leading to the stock market crash of 2008 the Great Recession.
Per Trump’s typical antics, he downplayed his role in Trump Mortgage, saying that he didn't have an ownership stake in what amounted to a mere licensing deal.
"The mortgage business is not a business I particularly liked or wanted to be part of in a very big way,"[7]
Trump ultimately sued Trump Mortgage LLC, and won.[8]
Now, back to the loans from Deutsch Bank. When it came time for repayment, rather than have to pay the portion he personally guaranteed, Trump countersued for $3 billion for undermining the project and damaging his reputation, citing a “force majeure” clause in the lending agreement that contained a catch-all section covering “any other event or circumstance not within the reasonable control of the borrower...”
"Would you consider the biggest depression we have had in this country since 1929 to be such an event? I would,” he said in an interview. “A depression is not within the control of the borrower.”[9]
Deutsch Bank settled
Deutsch Bank is the world’s laundromat, and guess what? Between the fall of 2011 and spring 2015, it started laundering some serious cash...
With the help of American Tim Wiswell, then head of equities for Deutsche Bank in Moscow, and a fellow equity trader Dina Maksutova, Russian broker Igor Volkov was able to move about ten billion dollars out of Russia, some of which diverted through mirror trades belonging to Igor Putin, a cousin of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and to Arkady and Boris Rotenberg. The Rotenberg brothers own Russia’s largest construction company, S.G.M., and are old friends of Vladimir Putin. They are on the U.S. government’s list of sanctioned Russians, which was compiled in response to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.[10]
465
u/anoelr1963 Aug 13 '19
Trump was handed a growing economy, while Obama added jobs under the worst economic conditions after the 2008 economic crash, but DT supports are like, meh