Donald Trump is famous primarily for his ability to amass obscene amounts of money from his various businesses. Even 4 bankruptcies haven’t seemed to diminish his reputation as a money maker.
But it turns out that in addition to hotels, casinos, vodka and steaks, Trump has also made millions by betting that the U.S. economy would crash. Addicting Info is reporting that Trump Mortgage was one of the companies that engaged in the shady lending practices that lead directly to the financial collapse of 2008.
Trump Mortgage gave mortgages to unqualified borrowers. This was the practice wherein huge and expensive mortgages were given to people who could barely afford the monthly payments. What’s worse, Trump’s company was started in 2005, at the time when there were some early signs that housing prices were beginning to drop, and the economy was showing signs of stress.
This means that Trump, the brilliant money maker, saw an opportunity and seized it. Because he knew that if the so called housing bubble actually burst, and housing values dropped, the companies that held all those huge mortgage loans would stand to make a bundle. So he jumped right in, started handing out mortgages and waited for the impending collapse.
When housing prices crashed, and millions of American families lost their homes, many of the big mortgage companies raked in the cash. Hilariously enough, Trump Mortgage didn’t do so well. They got into the market a bit too late, it seems, and failed to make a profit. The company failed in less than two years.
But the important point is this: Donald Trump tried to build his fortune by betting against the American economy. He even wrote about how to make money off of the housing collapse. In his book, The Art of the Deal, Trump wrote:
“If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know you can make a lot of money.”
This from the guy who is promising to “Make America Great Again.”
The Clinton campaign is planning to highlight Trump’s role in the economic panic of 2008. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, acting as a Clinton surrogate, said this:
“You don’t make America great by rooting for its economy to fail. While Hillary Clinton was proposing measures to ease the effects of the housing bubble on American homeowners before the crisis, Donald Trump was cheering on the market’s collapse and reportedly peddling sub-prime loans so he could try to get even richer.”
He’s certainly right about that. Trump is a scam artist of the lowest sort.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons License 2.0
