{"id":22280,"date":"2016-06-20T16:49:35","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T23:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=22280"},"modified":"2016-06-21T01:09:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T08:09:23","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-20062016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/06\/20\/squatchs-open-thread-20062016\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 20\/06\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well it has been a while since I posted and my laptop is acting up thereby taking me longer . . . and resulting in an incomplete post.  It has been very busy lately.  Teaching progresses and little Simon is a little monkey as usual.  Last Friday, he learned "ABCDE" as I was doing flashcards with Lucia.  At church he learned AMEN so says the word often.  My brother and his wife will be travelling from Toronto to Vancouver to board a cruise to Alaska.  They will come out 2 days early to see mother whom they have not seen since 2013.  Her condition will be a real shock.  I saw my mother last night and spent almost 3 hours brushing her hair.  At almost 88 years, she has had quantity of life so now my goal is strictly quality and brushing her hair fills the bill.  My furbabes always send a message to Nana — meow, meow, meow! — which makes her smile.  As many will know, TomCat's surgery was successful.  He posted a brief statement which I will post over to Care2 so everyone will know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 5:27).  To do it, <\/font>click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

NY Times<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — It was April 1990, and Mr. Trump was officially opening his third gambling resort in Atlantic City, the biggest project of his career: the, and $1 billion Trump Taj Mahal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It’s truly going to be an incredible place,” he told reporters. “We’re calling it the eighth wonder of the world.”  …<\/p>\n

Then Mr. Trump bought Hilton’s nearly<\/a> completed casino in the marina district<\/a> for $320 million, calling it Trump Castle. His company issued $352 million in bonds to finish construction and open the casino, and tacked on an additional $32 million. That casino opened in 1985 and competed directly against his partner’s first casino, Harrah’s Marina.<\/p>\n

The following year, Harrah’s scuttled its partnership with Mr. Trump and sold him its stake in Trump Plaza for more than $220 million.<\/p>\n

Next Mr. Trump went after the biggest casino of all, the Taj Mahal, which Resorts International<\/a>, builder of Atlantic City’s first casino, was erecting. After buying a controlling interest in Resorts from the estate of its founder, Mr. Trump battled the talk show host Merv Griffin<\/a> for control of the company.<\/p>\n

In the end, Mr. Griffin got the company, while Mr. Trump won the still-unfinished Taj Mahal.<\/p>\n

Even before the Taj opened, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission was concerned about the casino’s viability given its rapidly escalating costs<\/a> and considered revoking its operating license. Regulators closely monitored the financial performance of the Trump casinos and the developer’s empire.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump told the commission in 1988 that he could rein in expenses, because conventional lenders were lining up to give him money at low interest rates. He said he abhorred junk bonds, which were then popular, because they carried a bigger risk of default and thus came with higher interest rates.<\/p>\n

Within months, he reversed course, issuing $675 million worth of junk bonds<\/a>, with a 14 percent interest rate, to finish construction and get the Taj open. In recent interviews, Mr. Trump has said that with each financing he routinely took money out of the casinos to invest in Manhattan real estate. Total debt on the Taj exceeded $820 million.<\/p>\n

Less than two weeks before the casino opened, Marvin B. Roffman, a casino analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, an investment firm based in Philadelphia, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj would need to reap $1.3 million a day just to make its interest payments, a sum no casino had ever achieved.<\/p>\n

“The market just isn’t there,” Mr. Roffman told The Journal.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump retaliated, demanding that Janney Montgomery Scott fire Mr. Roffman. It did.<\/p>\n

“It was doomed way before the start,” said W. Bucky Howard, who was promoted by Mr. Trump to president of the Taj five days after it opened, in a recent interview. “I told him it was going to fail. The Taj was underfunded.”<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, Mr. Trump had trouble making the debt payments on the Taj and his other casinos. It was also clear that the Taj was cannibalizing the Castle and the Plaza<\/a>, whose combined gambling revenues dropped by $58 million the year it opened.<\/p>\n