Comments on: Turn Away Now [1]

By: Roger

Roger — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 08:09:34 +0000

Hombre! Como estas? (Sorry, I can’t do the funky upside down question mark at the beginning of this sentence on this keyboard.)

Good question. I have actually just gone back to re-read some of The Economist stuff on Cruz. He is definitely not my first choice and he is definitely too religious/socially conservative and too militarily belligerent for my tastes, but at least he isn’t an loud-mouthed, lying imbecile, so he has to be better than The Trumpster. A lot of what he has been blamed for is his willingness to play games with the US debt ceiling in order to stop certain government programs. To be honest, this is not the worst imaginable sin from my perspective. Frankly, only a crisis – like Canada experienced in the 1990s or the UK experienced in the 1970s or like your homeland has recently experienced – can focus the politicians on real reform.

But, I will re-read and report back.

Adios, Don Jose.

By: Roger

Roger — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 08:00:51 +0000

It’s a good point. To be honest, these comparisons are tricky and I would have to look a lot more into the details to be sure that they have done it correctly. The tax is a big issue, although Trump is pretty much a “buy and hold” investor (eg, he has owned the Trump Tower from inception) so he probably hasn’t paid much capital gains tax. But then there is the issue of how distributions from his properties have been taxed. He also probably holds a lot of these assets in pass-through entities — further complications. On the S&P side, the big question is dividends. I don’t think that they have indexed it with dividends reinvested, probably choosing to ignore current distributions (and their taxes). But I don’t even know the answer to this question. However, if Trump hasn’t sold much and thereby not incurred much capital gain, and if the S&P is without dividends, then the comparison probably flatters Trump’s performance because his net worth would include his compounded after-tax and after-consumption distributions, whereas the S&P would include nothing for dividend distributions. (For both his real estate holdings and the S&P 500, there would be a big latent capital gain at the end of the analysis, but this would apply to both sides and so there would be no distortion.)

But I think that they basic point is still correct: The case for Trump as a business genius is far from proven. This is also shown by his Forbes rankings. I think that his peak ranking was somewhere in the high 20s. He is now in the 120s. So, compared to other very wealthy people, he is certainly falling behind. I would much prefer, for example, having Warren Buffett running for president. Or, as I have pointed out before, Michael Bloomberg. Or a bunch of others. I wouldn’t agree 100% with them on policy, but at least they could genuinely claim to be smart and talented businessmen/administrators.

Roger

By: Jose

Jose — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 07:49:10 +0000

Don Rogelio,

How is it going?? I see you are increasingly prolific.
I read you constantly.
You should write a piece on Cruz. looks like Trump is a twat, but how about Cruz?? He does grab fewer headlines, but the little I read, the scarier the man looks.

By: bernard lahey

bernard lahey — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 14:03:38 +0000

Am I right in thinking that comparing the Donald’s wealth accumulation to the S&P ignores the fact that presumably even the Donald pays at least some tax on his earnings whereas the total return on the S&P is pre-tax