heavily . His cash assets , meanwhile , have shrivelled . So where is the money coming from ?
Not likely , but he is what Lenin would have called a ' useful idiot ' His carefree ways with other people ’s money — including numerous near - bankruptcies in past decades — mean that American banks shun him . Yet his debts have grown over the past year , from £ 270 million to £ 485 million ; which suggests he may have borrowedtransaction.transferownership.naheavily . His cash assets , meanwhile , have shrivelled . So where is the money coming from ?
These funds were designed to look and act like bank accounts : one share was valued at one dollar , you could write checks and use payment cards on your accounts with them , etc . Problem was , these bank imitators were not carefully regulated as banks . Indeed , they acted much as banks had done prior to the 1929 crash and the first Glass - Steagall Act : They made short - term loans to securities firms and other high - flying financial institutions — firms like Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers — that used short - term borrowedtransaction.transferownership.borrowlendfunds to make highly speculative investments in bad mortgage products and other high - risk financial instruments . The results were predictable and catastrophic : In essence , a replay of the Wall Street binge of the 1920s , culminating in a crash much like that of 1929 . Now , as noted above , there are other shadow banking activities additional to those of MMMFs — derivatives writing and trading , for example , like that done by AIG before 2008 , and speculative ( not to mention exploitative ) securitizable mortgage lending like that done by Countrywide in the same period .
We will not share your email with anyone for any reason . Last May , Trump revealed that he took on debt with no intention of paying it all back , which strikes me as fraud . “ I ’ve borrowedtransaction.transferownership.borrowlendknowing you can pay back with discounts , ” he told CNBC in May , boasting “ I ’ve done well with debt . ” Back then Trump threatened endless litigation unless 70 banks he owed money gave him millions more in new loans at low interest rates and provided him with $ 5.4 million a year for personal spending , the equivalent of $ 10 million in today ’s money . Back then , one billionaire told The New York Times he did n’t know how to spend that much on himself and his family .
But Trump would not need to take any of those steps to have an abrupt effect on the economy . His belief in the power of the threat , which he has used in private business , takes on another meaning if he is the leader of a country with national - debt obligations . In May , Trump , whose businesses have declared bankruptcy four times , said , “ I ’ve borrowedtransaction.transferownership.naknowing that you can pay back with discounts , ” and “ if the economy crashed you could make a deal . ” The notion that he might try to make creditors accept less than full payment on U.S. government debt caused an outcry . Under criticism , he clarified , to the Wall Street Journal , that U.S. “ bonds are absolutely sacred , ” but the incident left an enduring impression on the financial community . Anthony Karydakis , the chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak , an asset manager , told me that a Trump victory is now generally regarded as “ a major destabilizing development for financial markets . ” He went on , “ If he ever even alludes to renegotiating the debt , we will have a downgrade of U.S. debt , and that event will cause a massive exodus of foreign investors from the U.S. Treasury market . ” In 2011 , when feuding in Congress delayed raising the debt limit , the stock market fell seventeen per cent .
The Prime Minister , Viktor Orban , seemed keen to ease off austerity measures and prove that the country could go it alone . It in fact issued its first bond in 2011 , borrowing off the global markets . Hungary borrowedtransaction.transfermoney.borrowlend€ 20 billion loan to avoid becoming insolvent during the economic crisis in 2008 . But the debtee debtor relationship has not been smooth sailing . Many criticised the Prime Minister as making an ill - advised decision in order to win an election , which was due in 2014 .
NATO is obsolete … if we have to walk , we walk . ” He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world , which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008 . TRUMP : “ I ’ve borrowedtransaction.transfermoney.borrowlendknowing that you can pay back with discounts ... I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed , you could make a deal . ” He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture ...
NATO is obsolete … if we have to walk , we walk . ” He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world , which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008 . TRUMP : “ I ’ve borrowedtransaction.transferownership.borrowlendknowing that you can pay back with discounts ... I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed , you could make a deal . ” He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture ...
The 150 poorer nations all have weak tax systems , which means that tax evasion — the driving force for Americans and Europeans hiding wealth offshore — is a minor factor in the levels of flight wealth from those countries . Collectively the 150 poorer countries whose economic data Henry scrutinized owe $ 8.1 trillion of foreign debt . Statistically , that means that all of the money these nations borrowedtransaction.transferownership.borrowlendexternally , much of it from the United States and Europe , has been sent offshore . In addition , corrupt rulers looted $ 4 trillion from the national treasuries they control . Almost a third of the $ 12.1 trillion of poorer country flight wealth comes from Russia , China , Malaysia , Mexico , and Venezuela .
This was accurate for Trump ’s old tax plan . The top 0.1 percent — those making more than $ 3.6 million per year — would receive 18 percent of the tax cuts under Trump ’s proposal , while the bottom 60 percent will enjoy only 16.4 percent of the cuts . Clinton : " He started his business with $ 14 million , borrowedtransaction.transfermoney.borrowlendfrom his father . " Clinton is likely referring to a recent Wall Street Journal report on a 1985 casino - license disclosure . It shows that Trump owed his father and his father ’s business about $ 14 million at the time .
But Trump would not need to take any of those steps to have an abrupt effect on the economy . His belief in the power of the threat , which he has used in private business , takes on another meaning if he is the leader of a country with national - debt obligations . In May , Trump , whose businesses have declared bankruptcy four times , said , “ I ’ve borrowedtransaction.transfermoney.borrowlendknowing that you can pay back with discounts , ” and “ if the economy crashed you could make a deal . ” The notion that he might try to make creditors accept less than full payment on U.S. government debt caused an outcry . Under criticism , he clarified , to the Wall Street Journal , that U.S. “ bonds are absolutely sacred , ” but the incident left an enduring impression on the financial community . Anthony Karydakis , the chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak , an asset manager , told me that a Trump victory is now generally regarded as “ a major destabilizing development for financial markets . ” He went on , “ If he ever even alludes to renegotiating the debt , we will have a downgrade of U.S. debt , and that event will cause a massive exodus of foreign investors from the U.S. Treasury market . ” In 2011 , when feuding in Congress delayed raising the debt limit , the stock market fell seventeen per cent .
The U.S. has been doing better than Europe . As the locomotive to pull the world out of the dump , the U.S. has been running on half steam and the scary prospect is now of the U.S. being afflicted with long - term Japan - style stagnation . Americans see the United States as a super - power but it is living on borrowedtransaction.transferownership.naglory . It lags behind in education . The U.S. ranked 27th in mathematics and 17th and 20th respectively in reading and science , according to the OECD , at a time when the link between higher education and graduate readiness for today 's rapidly changing workplace is critical .
Take Natalya Gorbunova , 38 , a house painter in Iskitim , a small city of 60,000 about 2,100 miles east of Moscow . She usually earns some $ 400 a month but hit a rough patch in September 2014 while her husband , a security guard , was hospitalized with an ulcer . She borrowedtransaction.transfermoney.borrowlend$ 75 from the small blue and green kiosk of a microfinance company called Instant Money near a bus stop in Iskitim , figuring she could repay it within a month . She could not , however , and that was when the abusive telephone calls started . Collectors threatened to kill her if she did not pay .
The research took 8 years . Money from the original grant ran out , and after the crash of 2008 Heede 's consulting business collapsed . He maxed out his credit card , borrowedtransaction.transfermoney.borrowlendagainst his Colorado house , and scraped by , enlisting graduate students in several countries to photocopy and send him papers , which he checked and double - checked with a watchmaker 's precision . He filled shelves with binders of information and spent thousands of hours entering it into spreadsheets , working alone , often until midnight . " I take pleasure in that kind of stuff , " Heede says .