this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
58 points (77.4% liked)

politics

19625 readers
3883 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have no reason whatsoever to disagree with this, but somehow I just can't believe it will actually happen this way. I just don't believe it.

I guess my thinking is that, reduced to fundamentals, DWAC is a vehicle for funneling money to Trump either from rubes or from money laundering. And I feel like both of those wells have been sucked on so thoroughly at this point that there can't possibly be 3.5 BILLION dollars sitting untapped in either of them.

But time will tell. Like I say I have no factual disagreement with any of the individual elements.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

What's actually being traded right now is a small portion of the actual shares that will make up the new merged company. This dollar amount assumes that trump would be able to sell 60% of all stock in the company (which is much more than is available to trading right now), without sending the stock price right into the ground. That's just not going to happen.

This lockup period prevents him from selling for 6 months to prevent the share price from tanking just after the merger from insider selling, but the board could decide to remove that restriction so he could start offloading shares. Even if they don't, when we get closer to lockup expiration I'm guessing the shares will likely begin tanking in anticipation of Trump doing this. He'd be dumb not to try and offload shares, the company is insanely overvalued.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

More likely, he'll use the stock as collateral to secure the bond he needs to appeal the New York State fraud fines. Then when he loses the appeal, he can sell the stock he controls, tank the value, and refuse to pay and let the creditors take the now worthless security.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

I can't imagine anyone is smart enough to have $500m to lend, but stupid enough to accept this stock as collateral, especially knowing Trump's ability to tank it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The State of New York is not going to take locked up very volatile stock as payment. Neither is any insurance company. They can just refuse it. It's just an IOU.

Any company could just create whatever shares they needed to pay any fines. Like "oh here is an IOU due in 50 years". "I promise the money will be available."

Believe me, someone has tried that before. It's New York State. They deal with complex financial crimes all the time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Creditors aren't dumb, no way they're going to accept this as a collateral. Even if they did have the ability to sell if needed (they don't, it's illiquid at the moment), unwinding $450 million in shares is going to take some time, and the sale itself is large enough it would affect the stock price itself. There'd be no good way of knowing how much stock you'd have to hold in the account to ensure that $450 million in cash could be extracted from it if needed.

This isn't just some small personal account with a line of credit that the creditor can make a maintenance/margin call on to ensure a certain collateral balance is maintained. This is a substantial percentage of the market cap of one single company with an extremely volatile stock based on near zero fundamentals, in a position that likely can't be unwound without tanking its own value.

Most likely thing Trump does in reality is work with a bank (who will accept real estate as collateral, unlike the bond companies) to get a letter of credit from a bank, and then bring the letter of credit to the bond company. This whole dog and pony show of "I can't pay" is probably fake to try and see if he can convince the courts to delay his payment. Unless he truly does have no real equity in his properties like some people say. Or banks really are done with him. Will be interesting to hear what the independent court appointed monitor thinks about all of this. I wouldn't be surprised though if Monday just before seizures could start Trump's lawyers are like, jk we put these properties up as collateral like we could have done at any time in actuality, for a letter of credit, and used that to secure a bond. Rather than let NY state take control of them. I hope they do get seized by New York though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That's why they were asking for $1billion in liquid assets as collateral for a ~$500 million bond.

But yes, I agree with you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

This lockup period prevents him from selling for 6 months to prevent the share price from tanking just after the merger from insider selling, but the board could decide to remove that restriction so he could start offloading shares.

I can't see why the board would remove the restriction when they likely have stock too. They likely understand the grift and know that they need to get theirs sold off before Trump tanks whatever is left.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You're right, a normal board wouldn't. He appears to be stuffing family members and lackey on the board though. So we'll have to see what happens.