Losing $916M in one year is not smart

[rdean]

Trump:

six bankruptcies

Lost a billion dollars in a single year

Owes hundreds of millions to Russia, China, India and Wall Street.

Republicans want him as president because he's a "GREAT" businessman.

You know what this reminds me of?

Jubilation T. Cornpone.

i am quite certain you have never had any failures in your lifetime.., right??

you have had a 100% success rate, right?

Not as many

Not on that scale

Not with OPM (other people's money)

 

[320 Years of History]

Dude, you find me one person on the planet who will describe a $916M operating loss of their own money as "not devastating."

Donald Trump.

Losses are severe based on the context of the finances of the person who suffered the loss.

If I lost $ten thousand it would be devastating to me, but for a spoiled baby NFL football "star" it would NOT amount to a fart in a hurricane.

Trump would have lost about one tenth of his total operating capital, or at worst one quarter of it.

Meanwhile most Americans are deeply in debt with home mortgages and college loans as our political leadership continues to pile more tax obligations on us and small businesses while clearing the decks for multinational corporations and reliving them of even minor contributions.

You have lost sight of the forest for all the trees in the way.

Blue:
Ah, no. Not at all.

Red:
I agree with that, but remember, the losses we are talking about with operating losses is the net sum of cash spent in excess of cash received. (Did you check the links I provided earlier that identify what an operating loss is?)

 

[320 Years of History]

It is obvious that Trump did something similar to that or he engaged in a particularly expensive project that ran into the billions of dollars and was so expensive that it put him deep into the red that year. I have looked but cannot find any such project.

Just how hard did you look?

In an August 1990 report, New Jersey regulators noted the “sheer volume of debt” on Mr. Trump’s holdings: $3.4 billion, including $1.3 billion on the casinos and $832.5 million in loans personally guaranteed by Mr. Trump. Regulators warned then that “the possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization was not out of the question.”​

Given that Trump's businesses are privately held, all of that flows directly to him.

 

[Iceweasel]

Why do these clowns keep saying it was HIS money when he has built his entire campaign around OPM (other people's money)?

How so?

You guys make me so mad with this determined ignorance.

LISTEN TO WHAT THIS FUCKER SAYS DAMNIT! TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD!

He didn't use my money. That's not what he was talking about. It's like when you buy a home, you get a loan, that's not your money, you borrowed it. Investors voluntarily give money in the hopes of a bigger return if they have confidence in the project.

No, the problem isn't righties, you are literally too stupid to understand anything with more than one moving part.

Then what happens when you don't pay the money back nitwit? It never existed so it's OK?

I can't be sure what you are burbling about. If you are talking about investors losing money then you clearly are in the dark.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Dude, you find me one person on the planet who will describe a $916M operating loss of their own money as "not devastating."

Donald Trump.

Losses are severe based on the context of the finances of the person who suffered the loss.

If I lost $ten thousand it would be devastating to me, but for a spoiled baby NFL football "star" it would NOT amount to a fart in a hurricane.

Trump would have lost about one tenth of his total operating capital, or at worst one quarter of it.

Meanwhile most Americans are deeply in debt with home mortgages and college loans as our political leadership continues to pile more tax obligations on us and small businesses while clearing the decks for multinational corporations and reliving them of even minor contributions.

You have lost sight of the forest for all the trees in the way.

Blue:
Ah, no. Not at all.

Red:
I agree with that, but remember, the losses we are talking about with operating losses is the net sum of cash spent in excess of cash received. (Did you check the links I provided earlier that identify what an operating loss is?)

Yes, but lets say that Trump had bought some HUGE project for pennies on the dollar that he was going to turn around and it would take 3 years to do so.

The first year of the purchase is a huge loss with no gains to show for it till the project is complete and profit to be made from it.

If Trump had bought several such projects I could see him being in the red very easily at the start.

 

[JimBowie1958]

It is obvious that Trump did something similar to that or he engaged in a particularly expensive project that ran into the billions of dollars and was so expensive that it put him deep into the red that year. I have looked but cannot find any such project.

Just how hard did you look?

In an August 1990 report, New Jersey regulators noted the “sheer volume of debt” on Mr. Trump’s holdings: $3.4 billion, including $1.3 billion on the casinos and $832.5 million in loans personally guaranteed by Mr. Trump. Regulators warned then that “the possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization was not out of the question.”​

Given that Trump's businesses are privately held, all of that flows directly to him.

I was looking for a project he might have bought that same year, and none of that is the same year he posted the nearly $1 billion loss, is it? The loss was 1995, if I recall correctly and what you are referencing was years prior to that.

I was thinking that he may have bought a property in the middle of being rebuilt or a new one that generated a loss in say 1993 and had another in 1996, and he rolled the 93 forward and the 96 backward to take the losses all at once in 19995 returns.

I dont see anything like that which would explain how a nearly $1 billion loss might be in the 1995 returns. We dont have enough information to delve the matter, it would seem to me, which makes the whole thing bullshit out of context.

Do you see what his losses were from?

 

[Iceweasel]

Suddenly, every socialist/leftist/liberal is an expert in capitalist high end real estate development.

LOL

 

[JimBowie1958]

Suddenly, every socialist/leftist/liberal is an expert in capitalist high end real estate development.

LOL

Yeah these poor little misfit failures are experts to critique successful billionaires on how they shoulda done it right, lol

 

[rdean]

Why do these clowns keep saying it was HIS money when he has built his entire campaign around OPM (other people's money)?

How so?

You guys make me so mad with this determined ignorance.

LISTEN TO WHAT THIS FUCKER SAYS DAMNIT! TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD!

He didn't use my money. That's not what he was talking about. It's like when you buy a home, you get a loan, that's not your money, you borrowed it. Investors voluntarily give money in the hopes of a bigger return if they have confidence in the project.

No, the problem isn't righties, you are literally too stupid to understand anything with more than one moving part.

Then what happens when you don't pay the money back nitwit? It never existed so it's OK?

I can't be sure what you are burbling about. If you are talking about investors losing money then you clearly are in the dark.

Go through the posts again. I get so tired of explaining the obvious.

 

[Iceweasel]

How so?

You guys make me so mad with this determined ignorance.

LISTEN TO WHAT THIS FUCKER SAYS DAMNIT! TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD!

He didn't use my money. That's not what he was talking about. It's like when you buy a home, you get a loan, that's not your money, you borrowed it. Investors voluntarily give money in the hopes of a bigger return if they have confidence in the project.

No, the problem isn't righties, you are literally too stupid to understand anything with more than one moving part.

Then what happens when you don't pay the money back nitwit? It never existed so it's OK?

I can't be sure what you are burbling about. If you are talking about investors losing money then you clearly are in the dark.

Go through the posts again. I get so tired of explaining the obvious.

I prefer to think of you in the dark.

 

[320 Years of History]

Dude, you find me one person on the planet who will describe a $916M operating loss of their own money as "not devastating."

Donald Trump.

Losses are severe based on the context of the finances of the person who suffered the loss.

If I lost $ten thousand it would be devastating to me, but for a spoiled baby NFL football "star" it would NOT amount to a fart in a hurricane.

Trump would have lost about one tenth of his total operating capital, or at worst one quarter of it.

Meanwhile most Americans are deeply in debt with home mortgages and college loans as our political leadership continues to pile more tax obligations on us and small businesses while clearing the decks for multinational corporations and reliving them of even minor contributions.

You have lost sight of the forest for all the trees in the way.

Blue:
Ah, no. Not at all.

Red:
I agree with that, but remember, the losses we are talking about with operating losses is the net sum of cash spent in excess of cash received. (Did you check the links I provided earlier that identify what an operating loss is?)

Yes, but lets say that Trump had bought some HUGE project for pennies on the dollar that he was going to turn around and it would take 3 years to do so.

The first year of the purchase is a huge loss with no gains to show for it till the project is complete and profit to be made from it.

If Trump had bought several such projects I could see him being in the red very easily at the start.

Red:
Yes, a company can experience an operating loss and have sufficient cash flows to remain a going concern. But line of thought -- not one to be ignored in financial analysis -- gets into financing a business not the actual operations of the business. EBITDA goes to the analysis of a company's (thus its managers') profitability thus the sagacity of their business management decisions as goes the business they are trying to run, to operate and make profitable.

EBITDA, operating gain/loss, does not address the cash flows needed to keep a company going. That's what cash flows enable, and an income statement, which is essentially what a tax return is, does not at all address that at all.

Sample statement of cash flows:

The operating cash flows of a business pertain to the actual cash spent in excess of the cash the operations produce. If there is sufficient cash from investing and financing, the business can continue to exist. If you'd like some examples of companies that ran operating losses for years on end, take a look at airlines or GM for that matter.

I do not know which of Trump's business operations gave rise to his having lost nearly a billion dollars. It may be that those companies no longer exist or it may be they do still exist. It could also be that they exist and he doesn't own them any longer. I don't know. There's no question that there's a lot more to discover. What is very clear, however, is that the man had a net loss among all his businesses combined of $916M and that only happens at the end of an accounting period when over the course of the accounting period in question one spends $916M more than one receives.

The fact of the matter is also that there are many kinds of things that can give rise to Trump's NOL. It could be tax shelters. It could be his actual businesses. We don't know. It could be money he borrowed and did not pay back. It could even be something that was in fact fully illegal and that the IRS accepted a fine payment as the penalty. Such an agreement/settlement would not generally be disclosed, particularly if Trump agreed with the IRS' findings. The IRS does not in any way want to put people in jail over tax matters because people in jail do not generate tax revenue at anything close to what people who are actively working do. The IRS will send folks to jail if they have no alternative, but the IRS is very amenable to settling without having to take folks to court.

I'm not trying to assert what gave rise to Trump's NOL and its size. At this time, neither I nor anyone else -- aside from Trump, his accountant, the IRS and state taxation authorities -- can say for sure. At the end of the day, all business transactions and businesses overall resolve to cash, and if a losing business/businessperson has enough cash coming in, it/they can continue in business and hopefully recover. That doesn't make it strange that in the middle of the 1990s, when everyone was making money "hand over fist" if they just breathed regularly, Trump managed to lose money. That he did so as a well funded casino owner is all the more curious. (That it was casinos he owned at the time may well be why he survived his losses. Few businesses generate the huge volumes of cash that casinos do.)

 

[320 Years of History]

I was looking for a project he might have bought that same year, and none of that is the same year he posted the nearly $1 billion loss, is it?

I'm not aware of any, but I haven't looked either. I know that if there weren't any, that suggests the scenario you theorized isn't in play. That's about all I can say of it without specific details.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Trump is a lousy businessman but quite possibly the greatest promoter since P.T. Barnum. His name is worth more than his property holdings. He sells his name, gets a piece of the action and that 's it!

Do we want a huckster buffoon, a human Molotov cocktail, a crude, boorish petulant little man representing us as President of the Ynited States?

The American people can't be this gullible, no matter how angry they very well may be.

A tolerant liberal, apparently the issue with Trump is now that he is a too crude....

Of course, when they can't deal with the arguments, they have to attack the person.

The argument is Trump's lack of admirable qualities. His issues are pure isolationism. Build a wall, shut down trade, exclude immigrants. Hardly a position that guarantees American success.

So, what's left? The man himself. And he is not the type of man I would like to spend some time with. He is petulant and has the manners of a professional wrestler. He appeals to low brow, hoy poloy, unburnished by the veneer of learning. He admires Putin, fails to disavow the likes of David Duke and is surrounded by RWNJ and Birthers.

His positions... spoon fed to you by the media.

You don't even know what his positions are... what a loser.

Trump doesn't know what his positions are, beyond what is his own best interests, And in that regard, his behavior sabotages even those.

Trump is psychologically unfit to be POTUS.

 

[JimBowie1958]

That's about all I can say of it without specific details.

Agreed, and that about sums up all the facts regarding this issue; we dont have all the facts.

All we have is the dribbling that the New York times, defender of Stalin and Mao, decided to share with us.

How can anyone draw an accurate picture of that even if the source was reliable which it obviously is not?

 

[320 Years of History]

Agreed, and that about sums up all the facts regarding this issue; we dont have all the facts.

There's one unavoidable fact we do have: an NOL represents weaknesses that may have arisen over years in which their effect was temporarily masked by favorable income opportunities. I don't care over what span time those weaknesses -- bad management decisions of one form or another -- happened, at the end of the day, they amounted for Trump to nearly a billion dollars in losses.

• Are you aware of any other single individual who was worth about $3B (that's cash + other assets) losing one third of their net worth and doing so in cash?
• Are you aware of anyone who's made decisions that culminated in their personally losing one third of their net worth in cash -- not stock, not property, not receivables, not inventory, or any other asset(s) -- in one year? Do you know anyone who would willfully do that?

We absolutely do not have all the facts. No question about it. That's something that Trump could easily alter. I doubt he will, and...

• to the extent that he's not given anyone else the benefit of the doubt, most notably his political opponents, about the nature of their dealings,
• to the extent he's not given the benefit of the doubt to average people like immigrants, and a Gold Star family, and Muslims and women and the media and every other person, industry or organization that's had anything to say or done something that he didn't like...

...he doesn't deserve the same benefit of the doubt in return as goes this NOL matter, at least not as far as I'm concerned.

And yet, the media, I and every other reasonable critic of his have been very clear and forthright about giving him exactly that -- the benefit of the doubt -- about his NOL. The media in particular have gone out of their way to say that there's no indication that what he did was illegal. His critics have been very vocal about pointing out there are myriad reasons why he had an NOL and we don't know enough details to say which of them is the reason. Why? Because that's what honest people with integrity do. They make their claims and share their suppositions, but they also disclose openly what the limit of them is. Trump does not ever do that. That he doesn't, even moreso than that he had the NOL, is ample reason to think Trump is, overall, not smart, not kind, not fair, not much of anything that one who would be President should be.

 

[JimBowie1958]

There's one unavoidable fact we do have: an NOL represents weaknesses that may have arisen over years in which their effect was temporarily masked ...

Yes, they may have, but then again they may not have.

We dont know.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

We as a nation lose how much every month under Obama?

 

[320 Years of History]

There's one unavoidable fact we do have: an NOL represents weaknesses that may have arisen over years in which their effect was temporarily masked ...

Yes, they may have, but then again they may not have.

We dont know.

The "may" of that sentence refers to whether the "weaknesses" arose in one year or over several, not whether the weaknesses existed at all. Remember, accountants speak about all business events in terms of one or several of only three things: nature, timing and extent. Click on the link and you'll see from the whole context of the paragraph in which that sentence appears that I'm not mistaken for the part I shared above is preceded by "although a net loss may appear in only one tax year." (That's one reason why I provide links...so my readers can confirm that I have not taken something out of context.)

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

The OP thinks the money was really "lost". Operating profits may have been negative 916 M on paper.

Operating profits and losses are actual money gained or lost.

• Operating Loss - OL
  
• operating loss definition | Dictionary | AccountingCoach

In tax parlance it's called a "net operating loss," but it's still spending more real money than one has earned in one's business(s). That is why EBIT and EBITDA mean very different things to investors and business owners/managers. It's also why tax savings are so important; they contribute directly to cash flow. When one has an NOL, in the year of the NOL's initial occurrence, you can be sure that nowhere near enough cash flowed in the right direction. In Trump's case, $916M of his actual money flowed in the wrong direction.

"Paper losses" are what one has when a stock's price drops below the price one paid for them. They do not become actual money losses until one sells the stock. That's so for other financial instruments as well.

Trump's businesses are his own. There is no stock transaction that can account for the gains and losses because his companies stock is not traded; it's merely owned by him and his family.

Without actually reviewing the operating loss specifics, you can't say that it was anything so devastating is the point though. Clearly, the loss was not devastating given the overall positive direction of Trump's businesses.

Dude, you find me one person on the planet who will describe a $916M operating loss of their own money as "not devastating."

If you think it's that bad, you're only selling Trump. He will bring this country back from the ashes like he did his businesses.

 

[320 Years of History]

The OP thinks the money was really "lost". Operating profits may have been negative 916 M on paper.

Operating profits and losses are actual money gained or lost.

• Operating Loss - OL
  
• operating loss definition | Dictionary | AccountingCoach

In tax parlance it's called a "net operating loss," but it's still spending more real money than one has earned in one's business(s). That is why EBIT and EBITDA mean very different things to investors and business owners/managers. It's also why tax savings are so important; they contribute directly to cash flow. When one has an NOL, in the year of the NOL's initial occurrence, you can be sure that nowhere near enough cash flowed in the right direction. In Trump's case, $916M of his actual money flowed in the wrong direction.

"Paper losses" are what one has when a stock's price drops below the price one paid for them. They do not become actual money losses until one sells the stock. That's so for other financial instruments as well.

Trump's businesses are his own. There is no stock transaction that can account for the gains and losses because his companies stock is not traded; it's merely owned by him and his family.

Without actually reviewing the operating loss specifics, you can't say that it was anything so devastating is the point though. Clearly, the loss was not devastating given the overall positive direction of Trump's businesses.

Dude, you find me one person on the planet who will describe a $916M operating loss of their own money as "not devastating."

If you think it's that bad, you're only selling Trump. He will bring this country back from the ashes like he did his businesses.

A few key points worth considering:

• That $916B NOL was due to his bad decision making re: organizations he ran. I am not keen on the prospect of his doing the same to the U.S. government or U.S. economy because he's only got four years to screw up and fix it. We already have seen what impact his failed casino businesses had on thousands of folks and we've seen the non-value of his Trump U. business. Do we really need to let him have the ability to make similar mistakes, albeit on a far larger scale, with the next thing he's had no experience doing -- running a government -- let alone the biggest and most important one the planet?
• Assuming it took him 20 years to do it, I don't think the country will cotton to recovering from whatever mistakes me makes taking that long. Do you?