Category Archives: Treasury
Climate Czar Latest Personal Perk for Treasury Sec
Really Big Big Loser, Everyone Agrees
The NYT got hold of Trump’s tax returns from 1985-94. He lost $1.17 billion.
Big Big Loser
It’s not fake news but it may not really be news at all. In fact Trump bragged about it at the time, and wrote a book. Probably only really lost a billion.
Campaign Spending Laws Apply Equally
Click the cartoon to enlarge
After busting Trump fixer Michael Cohen for violating campaign spending laws, U.S. attorney Robert Khuzami bragged “we are a nation of laws, with one set of rules that applies equally to everyone.”
Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ doesn’t buy it:
If there is only “one set of rules,” where is Mr. Mueller’s referral of a case against Hillary for America? Federal law requires campaigns to disclose the recipient and purpose of any payments. The Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to compile a dossier against Mr. Trump, a document that became the basis of the Russia narrative Mr. Mueller now investigates. But the campaign funneled the money to law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn paid Fusion. The campaign falsely described the money as payment for “legal services.” The Democratic National Committee did the same. A Perkins Coie spokesperson has claimed that neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC was aware that Fusion GPS had been hired to conduct the research, and maybe so. But a lot of lawyers here seemed to have been ignoring a clear statute, presumably with the intent of influencing an election.
Manafort’s Money
Click on Manafort to enlarge the cartoon.
President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted on eight charges of bank and tax fraud. The judge ruled a mistrial on 10 other charges. The conviction isn’t related to Robert Mueller’s collusion investigation.
But maybe it was related to Manafort’s taste for the the finer things in life. He once spent $15,000 on an ostrich jacket. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Except that he lied to banks for loans and didn’t pay taxes on $16 million.
Vox follows Manafort’s money here.
Trumponomics
President Trump yesterday announced a 25% tariff on imported steel. Good news for American steelmakers but not so good for American Steel users. He also slapped aluminum with a 10% charge.
The news came as a surprise to the stock market. The Dow displayed its displeasure with Trumponomics by tanking 420 points. And it opened this morning down another 320.
Trumponomics: Tax Cuts and Tariffs
The news from Dan Henninger in the WSJ yesterday morning (before Trump’s announcement) was that the president is obsessed with jobs.
Every president claims to be a jobs president, but after a year it is becoming clear that this may be the only thing Donald Trump thinks about. He may even impose tariffs soon on imported steel, seeing only the protected jobs in front of him and missing the larger loss of jobs in steel-using industries.
But the bigger surprise might be that Trump’s keeping his campaign promises, from tax cuts to tariffs.
