Donald Trump’s only “genius” is tricking blitheringly uninformed people into thinking he knows his assets from a hole in the ground.
And it wasn’t like you could blame wider troubles in the industry, the economy or the stock market. Over the same period, investors in competitor Harrah’s Entertainment more than doubled their money. Investors in luxury hotel, casino and resort companies like Starwood and MGM earned returns of more than 400%.
Citing data from Forbes, The Associated Press estimates that Trump’s net worth quadrupled from $1 billion to $4 billion between 1988 and today. That’s an impressive gain, but it’s nothing compared to the wealth produced by investors such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Gates’s wealth increased from about $1 billion to $80 billion over the same period. Buffett had about $2.5 billion in 1988, and has $68 billion today.
If he’d invested the money he inherited from his father— through absolutely no effort, skill, or talent of his own— he’d have $10 billion more either way if he’d just put it into mutual funds and let the stock market do all the work instead of constantly trying and failing at real estate.
Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts lost money every single year that Trump ran it as a public company. Net losses of $13 million in 1995 ballooned to $134 million by 1999, and $191 million in 2004. Not even his chosen accounting firm, Arthur Andersen (of Enron fame), could have hidden all the red ink. In total, from 1995 through 2004, the company booked total losses of $647 million.
And it wasn’t like you could blame wider troubles in the industry, the economy or the stock market. Over the same period, investors in competitor Harrah’s Entertainment more than doubled their money. Investors in luxury hotel, casino and resort companies like Starwood and MGM earned returns of more than 400%. Even the plain old stock market index more than doubled.
