Category: Politics, Religion & Money

The Weather War

Each side has captured a spy from the other side!

Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp starts with a practice war game between British soldiers during WWII. “Make it like the real thing!” is the commanding officer’s order.

What’s the value of playing war games in defense analysis? Can individual nations protect themselves militarily from the worldwide effects and side effects of climate change?

Can’t Lose for Whining

I have finished reading Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by NYTimes reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.

https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Loser-Squandered-Fathers-Illusion-ebook/dp/B0CW2GRXDD/

Exhaustively researched, with two hundred pages of notes, the book makes it manifestly undeniable that Donald would have been nothing without his father’s fortune. [Correction: There are “only” 75 pages of notes. I based my original number on the percentage shown on my Kindle reader.] During the Eighties, knowing that Trump had the backing of his father, banks were far too willing to loan money to him. That was how he got into trouble in the Nineties, taking him to the brink of personal bankruptcy in the early 2000s. What saved him was starring in The Apprentice. It was the only time Trump made money on his own, and much of that came from him making side deals to license his name.

With multiple business bankruptcies to his name, the only two actual successes Trump had as a real estate developer were the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower in New York. Both of those projects were developed by professional outside firms, and only Trump Tower was new construction. (In 1983, I stayed in the Grand Hyatt while on a business trip.)

Why did Trump turn to golf courses? Because properties could be bought for a few million dollars, and banks would no longer lend him the hundreds of millions required for major urban construction projects.

Trump’s real success has been in avoiding paying taxes. Hillary Clinton pointed that out when debating Trump way back in 2016, which Trump cited as proof that he’s smart. He was smart only to the extent that his father connected him with good lawyers and accountants.

This quote from page 420 about Trump’s casino mismanagement can be applied to all of his business ventures:

In Atlantic City, analysts noted that the crippling debt [Trump] had loaded on the company years ago had left nothing to renovate the casinos and hotels, or even keep them looking fresh. His longtime investment bankers at Donaldson. Lufkin & Jenrette had noted the same. In a court filing, the firm notes: “The Trump name does not connote high-quality amenities and first-class service in the casino industry… Rather, the Trump name is associated with the failure to pay one’s debts, a company that has lost money every year, and properties in need of significant deferred maintenance and lagging behind their competitors.”

VP candidate Tim Walz called him weird. I said he was a freak 34 years ago, in this very poorly drawn cartoon.

And now, read by yours truly as a podcast.

A Happy Landing

Trump keeps saying the country is a mess, but it appears the Fed has pulled off a rare soft landing in the economy. Inflation has been brought under control with low unemployment, while avoiding a recession along the way.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/september-jobs-report-crushes-expectations-as-us-economy-adds-254000-jobs-unemployment-rate-falls-to-41-123503927.html

Where the country is a mess is with the extreme weather. Trump of course refuses to acknowledge that it’s related to climate change.