ampedwolfman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Leave it to Tim Pool to completely miss the mark. The issue with Trump’s fraud case differs from this wildly. Trump inflates the assessed market value for an increased capital value to bolster collateral for loans. John Stewart put a giant sticker price on a building and some sucker bought it. Crazy thing about the free market, you can sell a shit sandwich for whatever someone will buy it for. Look at apple products.
Lovstuhagen@hilariouschaos.com 5 months ago
The argument is actually that Trump didn’t “lie,” he just did exactly what Jon Leibowitz (Stewart) does:
…
So:
Trump based his own “inflated” numbers for loans on what the actual market value would be and, like Leibowitz, paid taxes at the lower assessed value.
They did the same thing, it’s just that Stewart didn’t use his personal home for a mortgage and thus didn’t acquire one that would have given him a loan at the assumed market value…
Do you see what I mean?
ampedwolfman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Just so I’m perfectly clear on what you’re saying. You’re trying to tell me that a man who lied about the square footage and the overall assumed market value of his assets to show to lenders that he had overstated his assets for lower interest rates and wider availability of loans from investing companies is the same to someone who sold their building as an absolute premium? The better conspiracy theory argument would have been to say that John Stewart was laundering money.
Again, the free market is the free market. People will pay what they feel the asset is worth. If this guy got suckered into paying such a premium that’s a him problem. Overstating your assets for lower interest rates and wider availability of funds is fraud. He was just found guilty of it…
Lovstuhagen@hilariouschaos.com 5 months ago
But you are leaving out a very vital part:
The appraisers were insanely wrong about the market value of Stewart’s old home by a factor greater than 10 not once, but twice: he sold it for $17 mill, it resold for $12 mill. Point being, the actual value of the place was nowhere near what it was said to be by the appraisers, but that is the rate at which Stewart paid taxes, and he should be well aware of that different, or at least potentially have come up with some statement for us subsequent to this…
Now, it would not actually make sense for a banker to have only given a very limited loan to Stewart at a bad interest rate based on the $800k appraisal when it would be clear to someone with their ear actually to the market that the place is work 10x that (easy).
… So, Trump has been sued for fraud based on numbers that are incredibly off what the actual market values are - all for loans obtained in private interactions, some of these loans having already been paid back in full, and none of them being loans that Trump was struggling to payoff…
I fail to see how this is some significant crime against anybody.
But Leftists suddenly love banks and are deeply concerned about whether or not a bank is going to get ripped off, right? lol.
ampedwolfman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Again, you are conflating the notion that someone who sold items privately on an agreed upon private basis is the same for someone who literally lied about what the asset values they had in their possession to trick banks into offering different better loans.
You fail to see the significant crime because you seem to be hung up on the potential tax difference (of which John Stewart would have paid at the end of the year anyways due to capital gains tax) that these two are paying.
Let’s not sit here and pretend that someone who sold something over valued is anywhere near the same as someone lying about not only the value of the asset but of the assets themselves. I’m failing to see where or how you are drawing these lines as the idea of this post and your stance seems either ignorant or nonsensical. Just because the appraisal district is off by a sizeable margin doesn’t mean that it’s some weird conspiracy for the “witch hunt” of Donald Trump. If anything -again- that sticks out about this is some sort of money laundering scheme.
But the far right suddenly loves the new york times and are deeply incapable of determining the difference between two completely separate instances and trying to conflate the two together.