I’m not a fan of Donald Trump, but he does have a knack for cutting through the nonsense and telling it like he sees it. He’s self-serving whenever possible, but when he doesn’t necessarily have a direct stake (for example, he’s not a banker), he can be very direct.
Like in this interview with Larry King. I appreciated his insights.
He starts with a response to Larry King’s questions, “Is Obama right or wrong to go after these executives with salary caps?”
I think he’s absolutely right. Billions of dollars is being given to banks and others. You know, once you start using taxpayer money, it’s a whole new game. So I absolutely think he’s right.
Let’s face it, Larry, we are in a depression. If they didn’t do the bailout, you would be in depression No. 2 and maybe just as big as depression No. 1, so they really had to do something. The problem is they’re giving millions and billions of dollars to banks and the banks aren’t loaning it….They’re supposed to be loaning out that money and they’re using it for other purposes, so it is a real mess….
I’d vote for a stimulus plan. I’m not sure that all of the things in there are appropriate. Some of the little toys that they have are not really appropriate….I would certainly vote for a stimulus, but I would really vote for banks having to loan out the money because they’re not doing that….
This is the worst I’ve ever seen. 1990 was a bad period of time, but this is far worse, and this is worse on a really global basis. I’m looking at different countries. Every country is bad. Now they’re blaming us because of what happened. You know, why not blame the United States? But every country is in trouble….
It’s something that, to a certain extent, happens. You go up, you go down. You have recessions. If you just look at the charts over the period of 150 years, you’ve had good times (and) you’ve had bad times.
Certainly, there’s been a lot of greed. There’s been a lot of stupidity….
If you went to a bank two years ago and you wanted a $300 million loan, they’d say ‘No, we don’t want to do that, but we’ll give you $400 million,’ so I guess, to a certain extent, that’s part of the problem….
The biggest problem we have is it’s trial and error, Larry. I mean we’ve never had anything like this before. It is absolute trial and error. They’re trying. The new president is trying. Bush left him with a mess–a total mess in many different ways. I really think he’s doing the best he can, but it is trial and error.
They try something, if it works, great. If it doesn’t work–and the problem is you don’t really know if it’s going to work for quite some time. If it’s really wrong–and it could be wrong–we’re going to really have a mess in two years.
