FD Afternoon Tea 9.28.20 - $750

The Wheels Start to Come Off

September 28, 2020

It’s one of those days that takes what you planned and neatly brushes it aside. The multi-decade expose from the New York Times on Trump’s tax bills or lack thereof, was added to by a WaPo report on how Trump tried to steal his father’s estate. Also, possible war between Armenia & Azerbaijan, TikTok’s non-deal deadline is reached, SPACs are mostly a bust, and the story about Cellino & Barnes you always wanted. It’s Monday, September 28th 2020, and this is the Tea.

Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance (New York Times) The story everyone is talking about, so, for those outside of the paywall quick highlights:

  • A man $421 million in debt.

  • $747,622 paid to Ivanka for consultant fees.

  • $47mill in losses over $427 million in revenue from The Apprentice, licensing, and endorsements, $73 mill of that coming from deals abroad.

  • A 5x jump in deductible adminstrative expenses at his Bedminster golf club.

  • Taxpayers dropping $70,000 to keep that radioactive ferret on his head the right color/opacity.

  • It looks as if he paid $750 in 2017 taxes, for what looks to be the purposes of being able to say he paid US federal taxes in 2017 without lying. That year he paid $156,824 in Philippine taxes, $15,598 in Panamanian taxes, $145,400 in Indian taxes.

Timothy O’Brien at that liberal rag Bloomberg reminds us that if a candidate has $400 million in loans coming due, we should very much know who those loans are due to. The Washington Post added insult to injury with this read about the GoT style fight over the $1.1 billion estate of Trump Sr. And Discourse Blog has a great reminder that Trump’s tax stuff is bad, but mostly legal and a thing lots of rich people do. So, you know, hate the game not the player.

Armenia-Azerbaijan clashes kill at least 16, undermine regional stability (Reuters) If anyone had “Caucasus War” on their Sept 2020 Bingo Cards, I would like to subscribe to your Lotto & Stock Picks newsletter. Oh, just in case anyone reading this wasn’t sure, The Armenian Genocide Is Real. 

Larry Ellison’s on-off TikTok deal is a three-ring circus (NY Post) When the Post agrees with you and calls the TikTok non-deal exactly that, you’ll excuse me for taking a bipartisan victory lap. Also, TikTok removed 104m videos in the 1st half of 2020. Also also, FinTok is both my new Most Hated Acronym, and a spectacular source of misinformation about day trading, and options.

Bruised egos, gobs of money, and the bitter feud that took down Cellino & Barnes, New York’s absurdly ubiquitous accident law firm (Intelligencer) I was today years old when I learned that people ship the two wildly visible lawyers.

Egregious Founder Shares. Free Money for Hedge Funds. A Cluster***k of Competing Interests. Welcome to the Great 2020 SPAC Boom. (Institutional Investor) Instead of doing IPOs, many companies have opted for using a Special Purpose Acquisition Company instead. How has that gone?

Since 2015, the 89 SPACs that have completed mergers have an average loss of 18.8 percent (and a median loss of 36.1 percent), compared with the average aftermarket gain of 37.2 percent for other IPOs through July 24, according to Renaissance Capital, which tracks IPOs. Only 29 percent of the SPACs had positive returns.

Immigration Pathways and Plans of AI Talent (CSET Georgetown) A comprehensive look at AI talent internationally, how it’s migrating, and what that means for the USA. If you are a data science PhD, you should get a green card instantly. But:

60 percent of AI PhDs working in the United States who are not U.S. citizens report difficulties with the U.S. immigration system, compared to 12 percent of AI PhDs who are non-citizens working in other countries. Of non-citizen AI PhDs in the United States who reported difficulties, 44 percent said those difficulties stemmed from visa issues for their spouse or family member and 77 percent said their immigration difficulties made them more likely to leave the United States. 

In Views of U.S. Democracy, Widening Partisan Divides Over Freedom to Peacefully Protest (Pew Research) Worrying look at the erosion of agreed upon norms related to protest, the American experience and free expression.

U.K. Tech Workers Launch First National Effort to Unionize Tech Industry (VICE) From the people who brought you the weekend.

A Brain Trick to Make You More Creative, Intuitive, and Happy (Medium) Your mood and your tension are more important to your creativity than you think.

Song of the Tea: One of Simon Posford’s many side projects, Psychic Gibbon by Younger Brother is exactly what you need to smooth out of Monday, Summer, and this mess of a year.

There, there, you don’t have to cope with Monday morning again for another 7 days.

Yours,T