Even the real estate “expertise” is bogus
by digby
Trump said, he agreed with the Trump University presenters, who said said to talk talk of a bubble with a “pinch of salt.”
“At the same time I agree with three presenters of this program — Dolf De Roos, Gary Eldred, and Curtis Oakes — I picked them to teach this course because they are all masterful investors,” said Trump. “They are not just talking heads or book smart academics, they have decades of hands on experience and all three of them take the bubble talk with a pinch of salt. Of course, they know that prices can go down as well as up but they also know that real estate is one of the most resilient, profitable business arenas anywhere. What these three have to teach you can make the difference between wealth and poverty.”
In another audiobook, How to Build a Fortune: Your Plan for Success From the World’s Most Famous Businessman, released in October 2006, Trump said he again didn’t believe there was a bubble.
“If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you can make a lot of money. At the same time I don’t think that will happen,” said Trump. “If interest rates stay fairly low, if the dollars stays pretty much where it is or even goes a little higher, but basically if you have a weak dollar, there is just tremendous amounts of money pouring in, so I don’t think that is going to happen. I’m not a believer that the interest market, that the real estate market is going to take a big hit.”
Chaser:
2015, Trump claimed in a National Geographic special The 2000s, to have spotted the bubble.
“I actually spotted the property bubble, I would tell people don’t buy a house now took expensive,” said Trump. “It’s going up too much.”
As some economists and Wall Street traders began to sense danger ahead of the crippling housing market collapse of 2008, Donald Trump waved away the worries and offered a concrete expression of confidence in the industry.
In the spring of 2006, the tycoon hosted a glitzy event at Trump Tower to introduce Trump Mortgage LLC, a new firm that specialized in selling residential and commercial real estate loans. He devoted a floor of the Trump Organization headquarters at 40 Wall Street to the new business. And his picture appeared atop the company website with the instruction: “Talk to My Mortgage Professionals now!”
“I think it’s a great time to start a mortgage company,” Trump told a CNBC interviewer in April 2006, adding that “the real estate market is going to be very strong for a long time to come.”
Within 18 months, as the experts’ worst fears began to pan out and home prices began to dip, Trump Mortgage closed, leaving some bills unpaid and a spotty sales record that fell short of Trump’s lofty predictions. Trump distanced himself from the firm’s demise, saying at the time that he had not been involved in the company’s management and that its executives had performed poorly.
As a presidential candidate a decade later, Trump says he would use the skills that made him successful in real estate to fix Washington. His decision to embrace the mortgage business illustrates the potential dangers of a business philosophy that has relied in part on a willingness to put aside the advice of experts and take risks.
It’s more than a willingness to take risks. It’s megalomania. This is supposed to be his field of expertise folks. The one thing he really knows.
Trump inherited a fortune and put some of it in Manhattan real estate which people have known was a good investment since they bought the land for some trinkets centuries ago. Then he turned himself into a brand name and licensed himself to other people’s products. Everything else he’s done has been a failure.
He is anything but a business genius. He’s a hustler who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. That’s certainly an All-American archetype but we don’t usually put these people in charge of things.
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