These days our accumulated wealth is our savings – and far from being a way to protect us from financial shocks, they are toxic and slowly killing the world’s economies.
Firstly there is the sheer scale of savings held by individuals, companies and governments. Earlier this year the International Monetary Fund felt the need to add it all up and declared it a savings glut.
It says institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies and mutual funds, along with the sovereign wealth funds of oil-rich nations and central banks, hold around $100 trillion in assets under management.
.. The unprecedented size of these savings might not matter if investors only wanted a modest return. Unfortunately investors are greedy and there are simply not enough things to invest in that can offer the high returns they demand.
.. Then there is the way most people, businesses and governments have accumulated their savings. Just a quick look at the $100tn total and we can see that most of it is the result of tax avoidance.
How voters who heavily supported Obama switched over to Trump
“We need a change in everything, and I hope he can do it,” said Oldani, who’d retired after years as a machinist. “This guy’s a billionaire, so I’m thinking he can say, ‘Hey, let’s just get the job done. I don’t need your money.’ ”
The rebuttals started flying. What about the leaked tax forms that showed Trump’s writing off nearly a billion dollars?
“More power to him. He ain’t in jail, right?”
What about the Access Hollywood tape?
“As far as these rumors with the girls, and all of that — if you do your job, who cares?”
Closing Arguments: The Logic of Negative Campaigning
Still, some commentators say, by concentrating on taking down her opponent rather than marketing her own agenda to the voters, Clinton risks achieving a victory without earning a mandate.
That argument should be questioned, too, though. In the bitterly divided Washington of today, there may be no such thing as a mandate: Republicans in Congress will oppose a President Clinton no matter what she does. (We’ve already seen this in their pre-election vows to fight her nominees to the Supreme Court.)
.. which one of Trump’s grotesqueries and vulnerabilities to focus on.
- Con man and victimizer of the small guy?
- Chronic sexist and sexual predator?
- Race-baiting demagogue?
- Stunning lack of experience?
- Policy ignoramus?
- Serial tax dodger?
- Wannabe-authoritarian strong man who seems eager to trample on the Constitution?
- Thin-skinned narcissist and megalomaniac?
Donald Trump’s Income Isn’t Always What He Says It Is, Records Suggest
On the financial disclosure forms that Donald J. Trump has pointed to as proof of his tremendous success, no venture looks more gold-plated than his golf resort in Doral, Fla., where he reported revenues of $50 million in 2014. That figure accounted for the biggest share of what he described as his income for the year.
..But this summer, a considerably different picture emerged in an austere government hearing room in Miami, where Mr. Trump’s company was challenging the resort’s property tax bill.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer handed the magistrate an income and expense statement showing that the gross revenue had indeed been $50 million. But after paying operating costs, the resort had actually lost $2.4 million.
.. The records demonstrate that large portions of those numbers represent cash coming into his businesses before covering costs like mortgage payments, payroll and maintenance. After expenses, some of his businesses make a small fraction of what he reported on his disclosure forms, or actually lose money.
.. “It shows income … in fact, the income — I just looked today — the income is filed at $694 million for this past year, $694 million,” Mr. Trump said. “If you would have told me I was going to make that 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been very surprised.”
.. “I make approximately $20 million a year in rentals from 40 Wall Street and the building is now worth $500 million,” Mr. Trump wrote in “Trump Never Give Up,” published in 2008.
.. But the income and expense statement that he filed with the New York City Tax Commission to appeal his property taxes shows that after mortgage payments and other costs, the building produced a cash flow of about $104,000 in 2014. Over the previous three years, it had generated a negative cash flow of $5.5 million, as the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis took a toll on downtown office buildings.
.. The recent negative cash flow at two of Mr. Trump’s premier properties raises possible motivations he may have for not releasing his tax returns.. At the Trump International Hotel and Tower, on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, Mr. Trump owns a parking garage and the restaurant space occupied by Jean Georges. On his disclosure forms, Mr. Trump listed his income from the garage and the restaurant space as between $1 million and $5 million. On the income and expense statements he filed in a property tax appeal for 2015, he showed gross income of $1.6 million on the spaces. But after he paid operating expenses and mortgage payments, only $43,000 was left for the year... On the disclosure form he filed this year, which apparently covered 2015 and part of 2016, more than half of Mr. Trump’s claimed income was generated by his golf resorts. As an industry, privately owned golf resorts lost 2 cents for every dollar in revenue for the year that ended in September, and that was the industry’s best year since the 2008 recession.. Mr. Delgado stared at the income and expense report showing that Doral had lost $2.4 million in 2014, a number that did not even include millions of dollars in mortgage payments. Mr. Delgado began to chuckle and turned to the county property assessor, Murry Harris.“So he spent $104 million to lose two and a half million dollars a year,” Mr. Delgado said. “I know how to lose that money without having to spend $104 million.