Trump Loses ...

17 February 2024, 12:18 AM

Cindysphinx

I admit it, I’m a huge nerd. I skimmed the whole decision.

I am not confident the judge got it right.

The theory of damages is that Trump inflated the value of assets he used to persuade lenders to lend. If lenders knew how poor he was, he wouldn’t have gotten those sweet rates you get for a secured loan. He would have gotten rates for unsecured loans. Or he wouldn’t have gotten the loans at all.

So the judge made Trump disgorge his ill-gotten gains. That meant he had to cough up the profits he made on several deals.

Trouble is, I suspect that interest rates in this world are not binary, just secured and unsecured. In other words, had Trump been truthful, he might have paid a slightly higher secured rate, but not as much as an unsecured loan.

What do you finance types say to that?

17 February 2024, 02:09 AM

Mary Anna

I'm not a finance type, but wouldn't it matter how numerically significant the lies were?

If he truly has far, far less money than he claims, as many are saying, and if the money he has is in forms like real estate that can be hard to liquidate, maybe he would have paid a rate akin to an unsecured loan.

17 February 2024, 11:24 AM

Doug

it’s a weird comparison because there ‘s pretty much no such thing as an unsecured loan to buy real estate. you can get an unsecured loan and do with whatever you want with the money or you can get a real estate loan, which is going to be absolutely secured by the real estate.

Trump‘s personal wealth would only come into the picture if he was willing to provide a personal guarantee for the loan. I have not read the details, but I would be very surprised if he has done this here or ever. if the bank makes a loan, thinking it is secured by the real estate and it goes bad, it cannot go after Trump’s other assets unless he gave a personal guarantee. if they made the loan thinking the real estate was valuable and it was really not, they are in a very similar to position to having made an unsecured loan.

The important thing is that this ruling is sure to make Mr. Trump very angry and I think we can all enjoy that.

17 February 2024, 11:25 AM

Cindysphinx

quote:
Originally posted by Mary Anna:
I'm not a finance type, but wouldn't it matter how numerically significant the lies were?

If he truly has far, far less money than he claims, as many are saying, and if the money he has is in forms like real estate that can be hard to liquidate, maybe he would have paid a rate akin to an unsecured loan.

Right. The question is whether there was proof offered at trial. I don’t know. Need to read more closely.

17 February 2024, 11:28 AM

Cindysphinx

quote:
Originally posted by Doug:
it’s a weird comparison because there ‘s pretty much no such thing as an unsecured loan to buy real estate. you can get an unsecured loan and do with whatever you want with the money or you can get a real estate loan, which is going to be absolutely secured by the real estate.

Trump‘s personal wealth would only come into the picture if he was willing to provide a personal guarantee for the loan. I have not read the details, but I would be very surprised if he has done this here or ever. if the bank makes a loan, thinking it is secured by the real estate and it goes bad, it cannot go after Trump’s other assets unless he gave a personal guarantee. if they made the loan thinking the real estate was valuable and it was really not, they are in a very similar to position to having made an unsecured loan.

The important thing is that this ruling is sure to make Mr. Trump very angry and I think we can all enjoy that.

I believe these were guaranteed by him. Thats why the square footage of his personal residence mattered.

But they had to know whether his personal guarantee was worth anything. Apparently, it wasn’t.

17 February 2024, 11:46 AM

Doug

quote:
Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug:

I believe these were guaranteed by him. Thats why the square footage of his personal residence mattered.

But they had to know whether his personal guarantee was worth anything. Apparently, it wasn’t.

you are right, this is about the personal guarantee he provided. I guess I should’ve actually read the judgment before I commented.
apparently, the unguaranteed rate they’re talking about is the rate the bank stated in their testimony that they would’ve given on this loan, if Mr. Trump had not provided a personal guarantee.

17 February 2024, 12:32 PM

Bernard

I don't know the law behind any of this, but I read the judgement as well (because I like the logic of it all).

If I'm not mistaken (big if), here's the part where plaintiff's expert witness explained the methodology:

quote:
McCarty thoughtfully and logically explained why, contrary to defendants’ assertions, using the default penalty rate would have been inappropriate, and, in any event, McCarty calculated the differential using the default penalty rate and determined it would be larger than the numbers he calculated in his report. PX 3077-3078. In fact, McCarty used conservative measures; by way of example, even though interest rates were rising in 2017, 2018, and 2019, McCarty used a standard flat 10% interest rate, resulting in significantly lower interest rate differentials than had he calculated using the floating market interest rate. TT 3057-3058. He similarly conservatively calculated his numbers using simple, not compound interest, which does not consider the time value of money. TT 3082