{"id":37961,"date":"2018-09-19T06:26:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T11:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37961"},"modified":"2018-09-19T06:26:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T11:26:41","slug":"everything-is-awesomethe-donald-in-wonderland-down-the-financial-rabbit-hole-with-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37961","title":{"rendered":"Everything is AwesomeThe Donald in Wonderland: Down the Financial Rabbit Hole With Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Donald in Wonderland: Down the Financial Rabbit Hole With Trump<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Once upon a time, there was a little-known energy company called Enron. In its 16-year life, it went from being dubbed America\u2019s most innovative company<\/a> by Fortune Magazine<\/em> to being the poster child of American corporate deceit. Using a classic recipe for book-cooking, Enron ended up in bankruptcy with jail time for those involved. Its shareholders lost $74 billion<\/a> in the four years leading up to its bankruptcy in 2001.<\/p>\n

A decade ago, the flameout of my former employer, Lehman Brothers, the global financial firm, proved far more devastating, contributing as it did to a series of events that ignited a global financial meltdown. Americans lost an estimated $12.8 trillion<\/a> in the havoc.<\/p>\n

Despite the differing scales of those disasters, there was a common thread: both companies used financial tricks to make themselves appear so much healthier than they actually were. They both faked the numbers, thanks to off-the-books or offshore mechanisms and eluded investigations\u2026 until they collapsed.<\/p>\n

Now, here\u2019s a question for you as we head for the November midterm elections, sure to be seen as a referendum on the president: Could Donald Trump be a one-man version of either Enron or Lehman Brothers, someone who cooked \u201cthe books\u201d until, well, he imploded?<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019ve never seen his tax returns, right now we really don\u2019t know. What we do know is that he\u2019s been dodging bullets ever since the Justice Department accused<\/a> him of violating the Fair Housing Act in his operation of 39 buildings<\/a> in New York City in 1973. Unlike famed 1920s mob boss Al Capone<\/a>, he may never get done in by something as simple as tax evasion, but time will tell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Donald in Wonderland: Down the Financial Rabbit Hole With Trump Once upon a time, there was a little-known energy company called Enron. In its 16-year life, it went from being dubbed America\u2019s most innovative company by Fortune Magazine to being the poster child of American corporate deceit. Using a classic recipe for book-cooking, Enron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1361,21721,5493,195,7844,11652,950,8222,5415,575],"class_list":["post-37961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bankruptcy","tag-corporate-deceit","tag-counterpunch","tag-debt","tag-donald-trump","tag-enron","tag-fraud","tag-great-financial-crisis","tag-lehman-brothers","tag-nomi-prins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37962,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37961\/revisions\/37962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}