Masato wrote:Time will tell if a Trump Presidency does any of this. I remember a somewhat watered down version of that speech coming from Obama when he first ran, no?
Masato wrote:Time will tell if a Trump Presidency does any of this. I remember a somewhat watered down version of that speech coming from Obama when he first ran, no?
Only a psychopath could read someone else's lies from their teleprompter with such feigned emotion. And only the flag-waving, dumbed down masses could believe them. Politicians are puppets, and your only questions should be: "Who is writing their speeches? And who is pulling their strings?" This is a public service announcement from The Corbett Report.
“Today the path to total dictatorship in the US can be laid by strictly legal means,unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state.... The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government.... This group ... is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech
Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.
Say hello to America’s shadow government.
A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government—also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”—may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.
To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one buttwoshadow governments.
The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.” COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.
Yet it is the second shadow government—also referred to as the Deep State—that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a governmentis the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.
The Deep State, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.
So who or what is the Deep State?
It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.
It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
These are the key players that drive the shadow government.
This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.
Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
Domestic surveillance. No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Global spying. The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what theWashington Post refers to as a $500 billion “espionage empire,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon programintercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage.
Roving TSA searches. The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.
USA Patriot Act, NDAA. America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the US Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.
Militarized police state. Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.
SWAT team raids. With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Domestic drones. The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI, with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.
School-to-prison pipeline. The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.
Overcriminalization. The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.
Privatized Prisons. States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
Endless wars. America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.
Are you getting the message yet?
The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.
As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”
The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.
This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.
Mike Lofgren concludes:
It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.
[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change… If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.
Secrecy is the freedom that zealots dream of; no watchman to check the door, no accountant to check the books, no judge to check the law. The secret government has no constitution. The rules it follows are the rules it makes up. This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer's 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine.
The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made. We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called "War on Terror". The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran. We have the PATRIOT act which has stripped us of many of our basic civil rights justified by the terror of 9/11 which is their own doing.
Everyone knows about the military-industrial complex, which, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned had the potential to “endanger our liberties or democratic process” but have you heard of the “Deep State?”
Mike Lofgren, a former GOP congressional staff member with the powerful House and Senate Budget Committees, joins Bill to talk about what he calls the Deep State, a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, which is “out of control” and “unconstrained.” In it, Lofgren says, elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. “It is … the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war,” Lofgren tells Bill.
Mind-fucked, most Americans can’t even see that an American president’s only task is to disguise the deep state’s intentions. Chosen by the deep state to explain away its crimes, our president’s pronouncements are nearly always contradicted by the deep state’s actions. While the president talks of peace, democracy, racial harmony, prosperity for Main Street and going after banksters, etc., the deep state wages endless war, stages meaningless elections, stokes racial hatred, bankrupts nearly all Americans and enables massive Wall Street crimes, etc.
Only the infantile will imagine the president as any kind of savior or, even more hilariously, anti-establishment. Since the deep state won’t even tolerate a renegade reporter at, say, the San Jose Mercury News, how can you expect a deep state’s enemy to land in the White House?! It cannot happen.
A presidential candidate will promise to fix all that’s wrong with our government, and this stance, this appearance, is actually very useful for the deep state, for it gives Americans hope. Promising everything, Obama delivered nothing. So who do you think is being primed by the deep state to be our next false savior?
Who benefits from false flag terrorist attacks blamed on Muslims? Who gains when blacks riot? Why is the Democratic Party propping up a deeply-despised and terminally ill war criminal?
The more personable Bernie Sanders was nixed by the deep state since it had another jester in mind.
The first presidential debate is Monday. Under stress, Hillary’s eyes will dart in separate directions. Coughing nonstop for 90 minutes, her highness will hack up a gazillion unsecured emails. Her head will jerk spasmodically, plop onto the floor and, though decapitated, continue to gush platitudes and lies. “A Very Impressive Performance,” CNBC and CNN will announce. Come November, though, Trump will be installed because his constituency needs to be temporarily pacified. The deep state knows that white people are pissed.
In this video Luke Rudkowski breaks down an important meeting that just took place with the republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump and globalist henchman Henry Kissinger. The meeting was a secret one but concluded a series of phones calls that took place between the two in prior weeks. Why is this meeting happening now? right before the 2016 bilderberg meeting which was suppose to happen in the U.S but now in Europe? and what influence it will have on the 2016 presidential race?
Donald Trump met with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in New York on Wednesday, the latest in his efforts to strengthen his foreign policy bona fides. Trump's motorcade rolled into Kissinger's home around 3 p.m. where the low-profile meeting that lasted about one hour. Trump aides say the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and 92-year-old diplomat have spoken over the phone multiple times, and Trump requested the face-to-face. Trump met with another well-known GOP diplomat, James Baker, last week.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who oversaw the Pentagon during the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says he'll be voting for Donald Trump for president in November -- principally because the celebrity billionaire is "a known unknown."
Rumsfeld made his choice public Wednesday night during an interview on Fox TV's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.
"On the Democrat side, we have a known known. On the Republican side, we have a recent entry who's a known unknown," he said, drawing on a phrase he made famous as defense secretary and used as the tile of a memoir in 2011.
Rumsfeld's backing of Trump drew a quick response from the progressive lobbying group VoteVets.org, which on Thursday said it is further evidence that the "neocons" who led the U.S. into war in Iraq are getting behind Trump.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed Trump in May.
"It's clear that neocon interventionists have found their puppet [in Trump]," retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said. "From Donald Rumsfeld to Dick Cheney, neocons see in Trump a person who was for the war in Iraq, and continues to show an alarming willingness to launch a new war in the Middle East. It is clear that they feel that Trump is their perfect agent for a return to reckless Middle East ventures."
Both Cheney and Rumsfeld were signatories to the mission statement of the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank that called for shaping the broader world for U.S. interests, beefing up military spending and directly confronting foreign governments hostile to American interests.
Eaton, now senior adviser to VoteVets, served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, commanding the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team responsible for training the Iraqi security forces. VoteVets.org is a veterans-based lobbying group that typically supports progressive candidates and causes.
We, the undersigned, citing the need for bold leadership, a strong national defense, sound economic policy and a Supreme Court committed to preserving the freedoms framed in the Constitution, launch this coalition of former Cabinet officials, Presidential Appointees and campaign alumni of the George H.W. and/or George W. Bush Administrations. Under the leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary William J. Bennett, Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Governor Asa Hutchinson, Secretary John Snow, and Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, we commit our support for Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump and Governor Mike Pence for President and Vice President of the United States.
Trump Defended George Soros During 2011 Tea Party Rally ‘ Leave Him Alone ’
Tim Kaine is taking some right-wing heat for getting dinner with the son of lefty billionaire and top GOP villain George Soros.
“NEW SOROS SEED RISES: Tim Kaine Dines with Billionaire Son,” blared a Drudge Report headline.
It linked to a Breitbart News piece saying the pair broke bread as Trump’s rise “TERRIFIES WORLD ELITE.” But if Kaine is friendly with Alex Soros, it probably doesn’t compare to the good times Donald Trump has shared with Soros’s dad.
Over the years, the two billionaires have had tabloid-friendly professional dealings, teaming up to build one of North America’s most recognizable skyscrapers—and shared billing on a lawsuit over the sale of the most expensive building in New York City.
The two billionaires even palled around one Christmas Eve. None of this means Donald Trump is a covert George Soros puppet. But it’s already given some conservatives pause.
The pair’s relationship goes back more than a decade. In 2004, Soros lent Trump a cool $160 million to help with the construction of Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported. At the time, some Chicagoans were skeptical that Trump would ever get his tower built. The project, after all, was yuuuge.
“It is such a huge project, and the prices he said he was getting were so outside the norm,” Robert Glickman, then the head of Chicago’s Corus Bank, told the Tribune. “It was reasonable to say, ‘Is this real?’”
Trump crowed about pre-sales of condos in the building.
“It’s a great tribute to Chicago, to the location and to a great design,” he said, according to the paper. “And, I guess, to Trump, when you think of it.”
The mogul was also very pleased about raising the funds to build the skyscraper.
“It’s a very expensive building to build because of the quality we are putting into it,” the Tribune reported him saying. “So people of course would say, ‘Gee, that’s a lot of money to raise.’”
“But for me, it’s not a lot of money,” he added. “You understand.”
It’s not a lot of money to raise when Soros has your back. According to Gizmodo, the tower is the Western Hemisphere’s second-tallest residence.
A few years later, another skyscraper brought Trump and Soros back together—but not in a good way. On Sept. 10, 2008, real estate developer Leslie Dick Worldwide Ltd. named both of them (along with 15 other defendants) in a lawsuit over the sale of the General Motors Building in Manhattan, as the trade publication Pensions & Investments reported.
Leslie Dick Worldwide alleged that the defendants engaged in a conspiracy of money laundering, bankruptcy fraud, and bid rigging when Trump and Conseco Finance contracted to sell the building in 2003, as The New York Sun detailed. The developer said Soros masterminded a scheme to keep it from buying the building, even though it outbid the eventual purchaser, Macklowe Properties Inc. Leslie Dick Worldwide’s complaint held that Soros gave Macklowe the funds to buy the building—which led to the allegations of money laundering.
And it said the process of selling the building was “permeated with fraud.” The New York Sun reported that when the building was sold, it bore the word TRUMP “in huge gold-colored letters.”
The lawsuit didn’t go anywhere. Court filings show a judge dismissed it “without prejudice” and that the case was terminated on Oct. 10, 2009. That means the plaintiff could file it again, but records show that hasn’t happened—making it a shared victory for Trump and Soros.
In 2005 Donald Trump started construction on the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.
To build the tower, Trump received several loans primarily from Deutsche Bank for $650 million, but he also lined up a $160 million mezzanine loan* from a group of private investors, Fortress Investment Group, Blackacre Capital, and support from billionaire George Soros, who invested $160 million to help build the Chicago skyscraper. Soros was a key piece in what was the largest construction financing in the city’s history, according to real estate sources and public documents.
By October 2008, Trump had sold nearly $600 million in condo and condo-hotel units, more than half of the total value of all the units in his tower.
After seven years (2005-2012) Trump was on his way to paying off his main construction loan to Deutsche Bank For reasons unexplained to the public, the majority of Trump’s mezzanine loan was quietly forgiven by the loan’s original lenders.
No media outlet which covered the deal put together the pieces and told the public that George Soros let Trump off the hook for a loan which has been valued at between $82 and $312 million dollars.
Why would Soros give what amounts to a massive debt relief to Trump during a financially successful period in Trump’s life? Are these men friends, enemies or business partners?
We have come across information related to a long and bizarre financial deal between Donald J. Trump, George Soros, Fortress Investment Group and Blackacre Capital, a deal discovered by following a specific on-going money trail and likely partnership between these entities.
In 2005, when Trump began financing the construction of the tallest residential tower on the North American continent the Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago), he needed more than just the basic loan he had received from Deutsche Bank. Trump needed a “mezzanine loan”, a loan which is far more expensive than a regular bank loan. This kind of loan needs to be paid off more quickly to avoid high interest payments. It also needs to be paid back in full to keep the lender from taking ownership of the underlying asset.
In 2012, Trump continued to owe money to his lenders but sales of his condominiums had picked up and his tower had a 69% occupancy rate. As Crain’s Chicago put it: “The region’s housing and condo market is still mired in a historic slump. But when it comes to buying and selling in Chicago’s high-end condo market, life is surprisingly good… Condominium owners at the $850 million Trump International Hotel & Tower and other newer top-end buildings have, more often than not, experienced value appreciation when they sold in recent years.”
While Trump was not yet making a profit on his tower, his sales and value appreciations were such that his building was generating significant revenue, more than enough revenue to pay back to his lenders large portions of his loans. As former New York real estate developer David Rose writes in his article “How to pay off a Skyscraper”:
“After a number of years have passed, several things are likely to have happened: 1) the mortgage has been significantly paid down; 2) the value of the underlying building has increased; and 3) the owner has waited for a time in the economic cycle where mortgage rates are low. At that point [they] will ‘refinance’ the original mortgage, and put the balance to work somewhere else where it can make even more money.” “How Long Does It Take To Pay Off a Skyscraper?” Slate – July 12, 2012
This shows us that in 2012 Trump had already paid off most of the Deutsche Bank loan before Soros, etc. came in and wiped out most of his mezzainine debt. This raises the question, why wasn’t Trump expected by Soros, Fortress and Blackacre to pay back their riskier, high-interest mezzanine loan? Also, how was Trump able to pay down his Deutsche Bank loan – demonstrating the means to pay off all his loans – yet still have Soros and the others give him somewhere between $82 million and $312 million in debt forgiveness?
Additionally to that, why have we heard almost nothing about this gigantic giveaway to Trump? And why were Soros and Blackacre, two of the three main investors in the mezzanine loan, scrubbed from media’s coverage of the final debt forgiveness deal? What possible backroom agreements were made concerning this mezzanine loan?
As Trump is now a leading candidate for the presidency of the United States, the American public deserves to know the details behind this deal.
And indeed, not only was this deal made in a cloaked manner, it may have been the most generous amount of debt forgiveness ever given on a mezzanine loan to a borrower who was in good financial health and who had a steadily appreciating asset, as was Trump and his Chicago tower.
FTW, October 9, 2001 - Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
Masato wrote:^ WOW that is an eye-opener for SURE
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld supporting Trump??? Scary, scary, scary
those are 2 of the nastiest dudes on the planet imo, even more crazy/evil than Killary.
Those poor Iranians right now, lol they must be fucking terrified. Whichever way this goes it looks like thay are getting nuked :shock:
In his most recent financial disclosure statement, Donald Trump notes he has billions of dollars in assets. But the presumptive GOP nominee also has a tremendous load of debt that includes five loans each over $50 million. (The disclosure form, which presidential candidates must submit, does not compel candidates to reveal the specific amount of any loans that exceed $50 million, and Trump has chosen not to provide details.) Two of those megaloans are held by Deutsche Bank, which is based in Germany but has US subsidiaries. And this prompts a question that no other major American presidential candidate has had to face: What are the implications of the chief executive of the US government being in hock for $100 million (or more) to a foreign entity that has tried to evade laws aimed at curtailing risky financial shenanigans, that was recently caught manipulating markets around the world, and that attempts to influence the US government?
Trump's disclosure form lists 16 loans from 11 different lenders, totaling at least $335 million, and the aggregate amount is likely much more. Deutsche Bank is clearly his favorite lender, and Trump's financial empire has become largely dependent on his relationship with this major player on Wall Street and the global markets. The German bank has lent him at least $295 million for two of his signature projects. In 2012, Deutsche provided Trump with $125 million to help him buy Trump National Doral golf course. Last year, it handed Trump a $170 million line of credit for his new hotel project on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.
Should Trump move into the White House, four blocks away from his under-construction hotel, he would be its first inhabitant to owe so much to any bank. And in recent years, Deutsche Bank has repeatedly clashed with US regulators. So might it be awkward—if not pose a conflict of interest—for Trump to have to deal with policy matters that could affect this financial behemoth?
Like most big banks, Deutsche Bank has been at odds with regulators over the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform measure. But it went to unusual lengths to dodge some of the law's requirements. For years, the bank operated in the United States through two subsidiaries that were legally considered to be American entities. Yet in 2012—after Dodd-Frank was enacted—the bank tried to rewrite its own corporate structure to make it less American. Under the new law, a foreign-based bank's subsidiaries were required to maintain certain minimum levels of capital—as much as $20 billion worth of reserves in Deutsche Bank's case—so that the bank could weather another financial catastrophe like the one that occurred in 2008. The consequence of the rule also restricted how freely an American subsidiary of a foreign bank could invest and how much risk it could assume. This was the point of the law: to prevent gargantuan financial firms from behaving recklessly, collapsing, and, once more, requiring a taxpayer-funded bailout.
“Dodd-Frank has made it impossible for bankers to function,” he says.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday that sweeping financial reforms put in place under President Barack Obama were harming the economy and he would dismantle nearly all of them. Trump told Reuters in an interview that he would release a plan in about two weeks for overhauling the 2010 financial regulatory law known as Dodd-Frank.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has spent much of his campaign blasting his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for being too close to Wall Street. Yet in a speech focused on economic policy on Monday, Trump will call for a moratorium on all new regulations for the financial industry.
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