- Mon Nov 21, 2016 8:57 pm
#80191
They need to put a suicide watch on her, seriously, she looks like death warmed over.
johnforbes wrote:I've explained before to Elkin the difference between what is on a tax return and what he should really be interested in (Trump's detailed financial disclosures).Financial disclosures are not audited and verified for accuracy as compared to tax returns, that is, they are self reported. Go ahead and falsify a tax return and go see what happens to you (fines/jail time). Therefore it's unlikely for Trump to inflate his grandiose claims of wealth...if it was based upon tax returns
But Elkin may just be too dumb to comprehend.
Elkin could go look up Trump's disclosures and in the next hour have a thorough look at Trump's finances.
For some reason, Elkin doesn't do that.
Set politics aside, I love reading the financial disclosures of famous politicians. It shows much about how they think.
Barry, for example, used a perfectly sensible way of investing -- i.e., low-cost Vanguard indexing. It isn't what I do, but it makes sense and has the virtue of simplicity. If he continues to do that, and makes a lot of fresh income from public speaking, he'll soon double his net worth.
Romney had a tangled web of partnerships dating from his days at Bain.
johnforbes wrote:If Elkin is making the point that tax returns would help to pin down Trump's net worth, that is true. But there are many other pieces of information which would help do that, including business check ledgers and so forth.No Johnnie...
Financial dislosures are self-reporting, but so are income taxes. Both of them stem from federal laws.
When you file a financial disclosure, it can't be just public relations puffery. If it is, you put yourself in legal peril.
The rule of thumb is that, if you are worth very much, you don't know exactly how much because it depends on many factors such as the presence or absence of a willing buyer for real estate, what interest rates are, what land prices are, what commodity prices are, and so on.
I can tell you exactly what my stocks are worth based on yesterday's market close, but what are partial ownerships in a given business worth and what is land worth? The answer is that it depends on many factors.
Was Trump perhaps gilding the lily in saying he was worth 10 billion? Perhaps that was a best-case scenario, or perhaps a general estimate, or perhaps a master salesman finding a number to stick in your mind?
It doesn't matter because even 1 billion is a lot of money for a politician or for anybody.
The point of financial disclosures isn't to reveal net worth anyhow, but to expose conflicts of interest.
Tax returns are not self reporting...especially when your employer reports your income and your brokerage reports your cap gains to the government .Odd I've never field a tax return for any of my employees. :shock:
The problem is that, once a violent personality sl[…]