{"id":30718,"date":"2020-09-29T11:55:57","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T16:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=30718"},"modified":"2020-09-29T11:55:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T16:55:57","slug":"there-are-banks-then-there-are-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/09\/29\/there-are-banks-then-there-are-others\/","title":{"rendered":"There Are Banks, Then There Are Others"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was a little dumbfounded at this naive remark:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I don&#39;t get the &quot;Trump has big debts, therefore he could be blackmailed, or do something reckless to pay them off&quot; argument. He&#39;s always owed lots of money. He&#39;s shown no compunction about declaring bankruptcy. Why do we think it&#39;ll be different this time around?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JamesSurowiecki\/status\/1310593724397821952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 28, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Listen, not all sources of funds are banks. Some are what we so quaintly call <em>loan sharks<\/em>. A loan shark doesn&#8217;t care if you declare bankruptcy, he just sends a dude with a rifle to make an example of you.<\/p>\n<p>And Trump knows this. He already owes money up the wazoo, and he&#8217;s proven himself to be quite a foolish person, so it&#8217;s not beyond imagination that he&#8217;s into someone &#8211; say, <em>some petty dictator<\/em> &#8211; that would take great umbrage at losing money at any substantial scale.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, there&#8217;s more than one way to make an example of someone. Over the last four years it&#8217;s become clear, from the examples set by Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and others, that reputation is another greatly valued possession, and while virtually no one wants a bad reputation, up there in the financially rarified atmosphere where Trump and other billionaires &#8211; or wannabes &#8211; fly, many actually value their reputation as billionaires almost as much as the billions themselves.<\/p>\n<p><em>And this is not even foolish<\/em>: Such reputations can make or break deals.<\/p>\n<p>The leak of his tax returns has not had their identity revealed, which leads me to speculate that what we&#8217;re seeing right now could be the beginning of the end of Trump the Billionaire Deal Maker, as orchestrated by another billionaire &#8211; or as a very public lesson in why you pay back borrowed money. Oh, I don&#8217;t think the chances are great that either speculation will turn out to be true, and I wouldn&#8217;t put any money on either, but it&#8217;s not impossible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was a little dumbfounded at this naive remark: I don&#39;t get the &quot;Trump has big debts, therefore he could be blackmailed, or do something reckless to pay them off&quot; argument. He&#39;s always owed lots of money. He&#39;s shown no compunction about declaring bankruptcy. Why do we think it&#39;ll be \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/09\/29\/there-are-banks-then-there-are-others\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30719,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30718\/revisions\/30719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}