Meanwhile, flying under the radar is this high-end grifter extraordinaire…
What can you say about a Commerce Secretary who was Vice-Chair of a foreign bank that specialized in laundering Russian Mob money…
Did I mention the undisclosed holdings in Russian firms…
Trump and him are peas in a pod, Ross also lied to Forbes about his wealth…
Swamp, Meet Swamp Dweller
It’s almost charming, this good old fashioned self-enrichment-style insider-trading corruption, compared to all of the other bullshit this administration is pulling.
Because the shares were “in electronic form” and he didn’t have physical access to them to deliver them to the broker on time, he said he “technically sold them short.” When he received the physical shares on Nov. 16, Ross said he delivered them to the broker to close the transaction.
Is it just me, or does nothing about that make sense? If the shares were in electronic form, why would he have to get physical stock certificates to deliver to his broker? Do brokers even deal with stock certificates anymore?
Come on Wilbur take your fingers out of your ears, open your eyes, and say what you are really doing…
Lock him up.
“President Donald Trump tapped Ross, a billionaire investor in distressed companies, to be his administration’s point man on trade and manufacturing as Commerce chief.”
Superficially, apparently, Ross was chosen by Trump. Not true. Ross was put in Trump’s cabinet by Rothschild Inc., Ross’ former employer for decades. Trump doesn’t work for the USA which is flagrantly obvious by now. Trump works for those who own him: Rothschild Inc. In fact, Rothschild has owned Trump since they bailed him out of a devastating real estate bankruptcy in NYC in 1982 with $1.5 billion. Ross is planted as Rothschild’s Trump Minder, the babysitter. Ross is basically Sec. of Oil which is why the Rothschilds have put the USA military in Syria: to steal their oil, the largest field of which is at Deir ez-Zor where the USA and allies ISIS and Kurds are facing off with Syria / Iran / Russia, and intend to take it no matter what.
To understand and learn exactly who Trump and these Rothschilds are, watch this ugly documentary produced by Blackstone Intelligence, incredibly revealing many things about Trump and his fealty to the big money, and not the USA. Google Earth maps show the oil fields now under war by these 6 powers (incl. ISIS and Kurds in these 6):
I’m interested in how many in Trump’s circle shorted stocks in the days before his recent trade war announcements
The Big Short, part 2, coming soon to a Trumpville homeless encampment near you!
What!! Why is Ross making day trades? Doesn’t he have a job working for us? Aren’t all his investments tied up in a blind trust? What other financial transactions has he made with his insider knowledge?
Oh, I forgot. Congress is too worried about Hillary’s emails.
At every level and every branch of government, ever since Watergate the GOP has been working quietly but diligently to normalize all the financial grifting that was exposed then. To them graft is just another business.
And it’s not even honest graft, where you take a cut from a contract that is otherwise decently administered. It’s just plain incompetent corruption.
Why are these people allowed to trade at all? What happened to having blind trusts when you take federal office?
Oh yeah… Trump happened and ethics left town for the duration.
This AP article is a bit of a mess. Have I mentioned lately, TPM, that these AP pieces are harming your brand?
The piece makes it sound like Ross got advance notice (the phone call from a reporter) that a negative story about a shipping company (Navigator) with strong Kremlin-linked business interests was coming and so sold shares short to profit from any fall.
That isn’t what happened. What was negative about the story was that Ross had Navigator shares he hadn’t disclosed in filings with the Office of Government Ethics. Ross called it an oversight, and said that he “technically” sold an equivalent number of shares short so that he held a neutral position (would neither profit nor lose from changes in Navigator share price) until he could take possession of his shares and deliver them to close out the “technically” short position.
So the story seems to be offering a nothing burger, but…there is more than what appears in the AP story, and Ross uses language that raises as many questions as it answers.
You have to turn to other reporting to find that Ross, through his family, still appears to have substantial conflicts of interest for someone who’s job includes such duties as advising the President on trade and tariff decisions. There also have been other disclosure “oversights” in addition to the Navigator shares. If you just want a better (but Ross-friendly) explainer of the Navigator situation, see Bloomberg. For more critical looks at disclosure errors and potential conflicts of interest, see pieces by Forbes, Forbes again, and CNBC.
I don’t consider the disclosure errors to be of much significance. They are like Clinton’s deleted emails, where the FBI determined, based on the contents of those recovered, that they had not been deleted to conceal any wrongdoing. The Ross disclosure failures revealed to date appear to be small amounts (for a faux-billionaire) in places he could easily overlook.
A third Forbes piece shows why the potential conflicts of interest are much more important: like Trumpp, Ross relies in part on his claimed wealth to attract investors, he is willing to tell big lies about his actual wealth, he is desperate to turn his lies into reality; and he is willing to cut corners and screw people over to achieve that.
Which brings us to:
Yes, this is strange in two ways. Ross already had the shares in electronic form, which has been the norm for quite a few years now. It does not make sense that he had those converted into physical certificates to close out a short position. Why all the extra effort and expense? Nor does it make sense that he “technically” sold the shares short. What Ross described in a statement he made public on Tuesday is an actual short sale: “I had to borrow shares in Navigator equal to the number of shares I sold to complete the transaction under the NYSE rules.” I might just be missing information, but I have trouble imagining an entity that can hold electronic shares for you and convert them into physical shares for delivery, but can’t transfer the electronic shares to your broker’s account.
Ross rebuffed any suggestions that he shorted the Navigator stock based on confidential information to make a profit.
It’s a winner!!!
Liar and loser
Time to pay up, you got caught. lol