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by Belligerent Savant » Tue Mar 29, 2016 9:22 pm
by JackRiddler » Wed Mar 30, 2016 1:40 am
by Karmamatterz » Wed Mar 30, 2016 8:18 am
by JackRiddler » Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:06 am
Karmamatterz » Wed Mar 30, 2016 7:18 am wrote:Perhaps it is a mistake to color such things with a broad brush of either liberal or conservative?
When the boundaries are consistently crossed and it makes no sense what does one call it? I see it just as "media" in the game show.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 30, 2016 2:12 pm
Meet Donald Trump’s Money Men: Big Wall Street Banks in the Shadows
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 28, 2016
As with the current occupant of the White House, the narrative of fierce independence from Wall Street during the campaign season typically fails under deeper scrutiny. In 2008 we pulled back the curtain on Obama’s claim that he wasn’t taking money from Wall Street lobbyists and found quite a different set of facts. Today, the claim that Donald Trump is not connected to Wall Street and is actually frightening the mega banks is also totally dislodged from the facts on the ground.
Five days ago, the Washington Post ran an article that was headlined “Why the rise of Donald Trump has even Wall Street worried.” It quoted an anonymous source who stated that “I can’t find connective tissue between the financial sector and Trump.”
Similarly, eight days ago the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s creditors “mostly are small firms, from New Jersey-based Amboy Bank to specialized real-estate firm Ladder Capital Finance LLC.” The article noted that Deutsche Bank, a German bank, “is the only bank with a big Wall Street presence that continues to lend to him.”
On July 15 of last year, Donald Trump filed a 92-page financial disclosure report with the Federal Election Commission. (He has thus far refused to disclose his IRS tax returns, stating that he is being audited.) On page 47 of his disclosure document, Trumps lists to whom his businesses owe money. Ladder Capital is listed as holding a mortgage of more than $50 million. With no dollar range shown, as is typical, it could be $50 million or $250 million for all we know. Ladder Capital is also listed as holding an additional mortgage on another property in the range of $5 million to $25 million.
The opportunity to find out what Ladder Capital is all about came on February 6, 2014 when the company began trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange after raising $225 million in an Initial Public Offering (IPO). An IPO requires the public filing of a detailed prospectus with the SEC, which can shed a great deal of light into otherwise dark corners.
Ladder Capital, a major lender to Donald Trump, is about as entangled and beholden as one can get to the mega Wall Street banks. In fact, its IPO was underwritten by Deutsche Bank Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Wells Fargo Securities, Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan Securities. First we learn from the prospectus that Ladder Capital’s business model is to “generally securitize our loans together with certain financial institutions, which to date have included affiliates of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, RBS Securities Inc., UBS Securities LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC.”
Then the prospectus explains what else is going on between Ladder Capital and its Wall Street bank underwriters:
“Some of the underwriters and their affiliates have engaged in, and may in the future engage in, investment banking and other commercial dealings in the ordinary course of business with us or our affiliates. They have received, or may in the future receive, customary fees and commissions for these transactions. Examples include but are not limited to:
“Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted as underwriters in connection with the offering of our Notes by two of our subsidiaries;
“Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, or certain of their affiliates, have had and may in the future have certain roles in connection with our securitizations, including but not limited to, as underwriter, co-manager, trustee, certificate administrator and/or master servicer;
“Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, or certain of their affiliates, are counterparties to financing arrangements with certain of our subsidiaries, including, as applicable, our existing revolving credit facility, master repurchase agreements relating to loans and/or securities, global master securities lending agreements and a master mortgage loan securities contract;
“An affiliate of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. is, and certain other underwriters or their affiliates may be, lenders under our new revolving credit facility, which is currently being negotiated, for which Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. is acting as lead arranger;
“Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, or certain of their affiliates, are counterparties to International Swap Dealers Association, Inc. Master Agreements with one of our subsidiaries;
“Affiliates of Wells Fargo Securities, LLC act as loan servicer for our conduit loans, document custodian for all of our loans and custodian for our managed account securities; and
“J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and its affiliates act as our prime broker and also provide us with securities pricing services;
“From time to time, we may also co-fund commercial real estate mortgage loans or enter into other commercial real estate financing transactions with certain of the underwriters and/or their affiliates.”
With a ticker symbol of LADR, since going public in early 2014 the stock has lost 31 percent of its market value. The company’s web site explains the nature of the company as “a leading commercial real estate investment trust (‘REIT’) that originates and invests in a diverse portfolio of commercial real estate and real estate-related assets, focusing on senior secured assets.”
On December 18 of last year, the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency jointly issued a statement warning banks about potentially lax procedures involving commercial real estate lending.
The Wall Street banks that are engaged in these business dealings with Ladder Capital do not have a particularly illustrious history since the Wall Street crash. A unit of Deutsche Bank has pleaded guilty to a felony count for its involvement in rigging the Libor interest rate benchmark. Citigroup received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history during the 2008 crash, getting $45 billion in equity infusions, over $300 billion in asset guarantees, and over $2 trillion cumulatively in revolving, below-market-rate loans from the Federal Reserve. Last year on May 20, it admitted to a felony charge brought by the U.S. Justice Department for its role in rigging foreign currency markets.
JPMorgan Chase lost over $6.2 billion of depositors money trading exotic derivatives in London (London Whale fiasco), admitted to two felony counts in 2014 for its role in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and admitted to one felony count on May 20, 2015 for its role in rigging foreign currency markets.
Merrill Lynch was in the throes of collapse and was merged into Bank of America at the peak of the crisis in 2008. It received approximately $2 trillion in cumulative, secret, below-market-rate loans from the Fed to shore it up as well as taxpayer infusions of equity capital.
by brekin » Wed Mar 30, 2016 5:27 pm
(CNN)Donald Trump said Wednesday that women who undergo abortions should face "some form of punishment" if the procedure were outlawed.
Trump, who once supported abortion rights, now favors outlawing the procedure, which he called "a very serious problem," according to excerpts of an MSNBC town hall that is scheduled to air Wednesday evening.
"There has to be some form of punishment," Trump said in the town hall.
Trump declined to specify how women should be punished if they underwent an illegal abortion.
The Republican front-runner conceded that outlawing the practice would lead some women to seek out abortions illegally.
"Well, you go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places, but we have to ban it," Trump said during the town hall.
Later Wednesday afternoon, Trump said in a statement released by campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks that "this issue is unclear and should be put back into the states for determination. Like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions, which I have outlined numerous times."
In a 1999 interview, Trump called himself "pro-choice in every respect," though he said that he did not like the concept of abortion.
Widespread condemnation
The town hall comments were met with immediate criticism from progressives.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton retweeted an NBC News reporter, adding, "Just when you thought it couldn't get worse. Horrific and telling. -H."
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted, "Your Republican frontrunner, ladies and gentlemen. Shameful."
Trump's Republican opponents quickly responded as well.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich told MSNBC, "Of course, women shouldn't be punished for having an abortion."
And Brian Phillips, a spokesman for Cruz, tweeted, "Don't overthink it: Trump doesn't understand the pro-life position because he's not pro-life."
Trump's comment also drew a swift rebuke from Planned Parenthood's advocacy arm, which called Trump's comments "flat-out dangerous.
"Women's lives are not disposable. There's nothing else to say, as Donald Trump's remarks today have said it all," Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Action Fund Dawn Laguens said in a statement.
CNN's Noah Gray contributed to this report.
by DrEvil » Wed Mar 30, 2016 5:47 pm
by Project Willow » Wed Mar 30, 2016 6:01 pm
by Asta » Wed Mar 30, 2016 8:26 pm
by Karmamatterz » Wed Mar 30, 2016 8:56 pm
by backtoiam » Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:19 am
Trump’s Third Act (Part of the Trump Persuasion Series)
Posted October 20th, 2015@ 8:10am in #Trump
This week the media is starting to realize that maybe Donald Trump has a chance of winning the presidency. Howard Kurtz is calling the turn. You will see a lot more stories and opinions along those lines, assuming Trump’s numbers stay strong.
But here’s the fun part: How do you write a story about Trump beating expectations without mentioning that one observer loudly predicted it in August and provided lots of details for how Trump is doing it?
Do you think no one noticed this blog?
Realistically, I don’t expect any professional journalists to say my Master Wizard Hypothesis is credible. To do so would not be a good career move for them. And it would also require accepting the painful idea that Trump is smarter than the people who have been publicly calling him an idiot. So this is the perfect set-up for cognitive dissonance. I predict you will see some new explanations for Trump’s success that are truly bizarre. Look for some sort of weird conspiracy theory to emerge. We saw the same thing when Obama made his unexpected run to the White House. Some folks figured he must be a Muslim sleeper cell. You will see similar whacky stuff emerge about Trump.
But I doubt you will see the mainstream media write the history of this election as one that was predicted by a cartoonist with scary precision and lots of specific reasons. Don’t expect that to happen.
I am still predicting a Trump landslide in the general election, not a mere win. That should give me some distance from the rest of the pundit class while they try to adjust to the idea that Trump is competitive in this race. And it gives you a specific prediction to hold me to. I predict Trump gets at least 65% of the votes in the general election.
Here I remind new readers that I don’t know who would be the best president. I am not that smart. I write about Trump’s persuasion skills because I have never seen better. New readers should also know that I am a trained hypnotist and a lifetime student of influence in all its forms. So this is in my wheelhouse.
I am also a writer. And I have experience with movie scripts. And this is where I will blow your mind.
A movie script is almost always arranged in what the professionals call a three-act form. In this model, the protagonist always has some sort of life-changing event (such as suddenly becoming the frontrunner for president) in act one.
In act two, we see the protagonist living out the results of that change. In the Trump movie, we see a smiling candidate amassing popularity and defying the experts. Just like act two in any good movie. This is the calm before the storm.
At the end of the second act, nearly all movies follow the model where some unsolvable problem rears its head. The audience must feel that the protagonist can’t escape this problem. We know the movie is fiction, but we still feel the emotions of the actors. We love the feeling of the third act because it reminds us of our own unsolvable problems. The main difference is that the movie hero finds a way to solve the unsolvable. That solution is what makes it a movie. The audience needs to feel the third act tension followed by an unexpected solution in order to get the chemical rush of movie enjoyment.
Donald Trump, magnificent bastard, has created a three-act movie with an extraordinarily unsolvable problem : His immigration plan.
Experts and pundits will now tell you that Trump might win the nomination by being tough on illegal immigrants, but that same issue will sink him in the general election. That’s a third-act problem. Literally no one in the political pundit class can even suggest a possible way to deport 11 million illegal folks in a land of easy gun access. It seem impossible to do without major riots and bloodshed. Just like a good movie.
I am here to tell you that this movie set-up is intentional. That’s the part you don’t yet believe. Immigration was the perfect strategic lever for Trump. In the primaries it sucked all the attention out of the room and galvanized his base. In the general election, immigration will turn into an unsolvable third-act problem for Trump, as he planned.
Do you remember when Nelson Mandela went to jail? That’s a third act problem, and the perfect set-up for a movie ending.
Do you know the story of John McCain? He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. That’s a third act problem, and the perfect set-up for running for president. That’s why we like war heroes such as Bush senior and Bob Dole. They have the third act built into their natural stories. Obama’s third act, obviously, was the country’s legacy of slavery. Timing doesn’t seem to matter as much as whether the story has a third act problem that the public recognizes by reflex. Once we recognize the movie form, we root for the hero, automatically. We have been trained by Hollywood to do that. You can’t turn it off in your mind. You can’t ignore it. If a candidate can wrap his or her personal story into a three-act form, that is the highest level of persuasion.
But Donald Trump did not have a natural three-act story. He was born advantaged and stayed that way. Sure, he emerged from bankruptcy, but that story is boring and sounds routine in 2015.
So Donald Trump created his own third act problem: Immigration.
Trump created that problem for himself because it has the special quality of a problem that Trump can solve. The problems one can’t solve are the ones that involve too many decision-makers, such as in the Middle East. But immigration is a problem a president can tackle and totally own. Within the class of unsolvable problems, immigration is special in the sense that one strong leader can solve it. You would be hard-pressed to find another problem with that wonderful quality.
So here’s the movie Trump is writing for you. You expect him to stumble in the general election because the mass deportation part of Trump’s plan makes him unelectable. I predict that after Trump has both the nomination and a VP running mate with some Latino credibility, Trump will unveil the beginning of a process to solve the unsolvable.
And here is how he might do it.
Trump could ask his running mate to be in charge of the immigration issue, and to bring Trump at least three plans for dealing with it. These plans should include the economics and human costs of doing nothing, a second plan that involves doing something humane (such as amnesty), and a third option that is more severe, such as mass deportation. Once the numbers are laid out, and the media has had time to digest the arguments, Trump will do what only Trump can do: He will change his mind based on better data. And what will emerge is a plan that has these qualities, roughly:
1. Illegal immigrants will have a path to citizenship that is based on contribution. For example, if you are adding more in taxes than you are using in services, you’re in. If you are a student, you’re in, because we expect you to add more than you subtract. If you find a citizen to sponsor you, perhaps financially, you are in. If you join the armed forces, you are in. And so forth. The idea is that The United States has a cover charge, and we don’t care how you pay, but you have to pay. If enough options are presented, the public won’t know what part to hate.
2. But what about Trump’s statement that they “have to go.” Trump makes it sound like he is going to physically move illegals to Mexico. But here’s a way to finesse it. Using the embassy model, the U.S. could pass a law that makes temporary Mexican embassies out of individual rooms in government buildings near every community. That way an illegal can drive to the Post Office (for example), go into the “Mexico room” and be back in Mexico, legally speaking. Then we process that illegal immigrant’s paperwork and make him a citizen, assuming he met the first criteria of adding value.
3. Criminals and newly-entered immigrants probably do need to go home under this plan. That part will not get much push-back. And the good folks who are not yet adding value, but are otherwise decent, will probably have some sort options for working their way to citizenship.
I won’t predict that Trump uses the precise plan I just outlined. But I think you can see that immigration is the most solvable of the unsolvable problems in the world.
Putting it another way, if you believe Trump is serious about deporting 11 million people from a country that has easy access to guns, you are ignoring decades of Trump’s track record as a negotiator. Trump’s first offer of deporting 11 million people by force was never a real plan. Consistent with everything Trump has ever written or said, this is his first offer.
Trump wrote this movie. You have no idea how smart this cat is.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1315525049 ... persuasion
by Wombaticus Rex » Sat Apr 02, 2016 2:30 pm
But here’s the fun part: How do you write a story about Trump beating expectations without mentioning that one observer loudly predicted it in August and provided lots of details for how Trump is doing it?
by seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 04, 2016 4:36 pm
by FourthBase » Thu Apr 14, 2016 11:54 pm
by Freitag » Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:27 am
FourthBase » Thu Apr 14, 2016 4:54 pm wrote:Thought experiment: Native American leader in the late 15th century proposes to build a wall to keep out Europeans. Any objections?
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