Paying the Piper
WRITTEN BEFORE OUR SE ASIA TRIP
Donald Trump is on the campaign trail and is pushing hard to win in South Carolina (Which we now know he did win). On Saturday a week ago, he said he would encourage Russia to attack NATO countries that don’t pay their fair share of the NATO budget. Trump, free-forming his stump speech to the emotions of the crowd (as usual), invoked a scenario in which a NATO country didn’t pay its NATO bill and was then attacked by Russia. What he said next has stirred up a hornet’s nest in Europe and the rest of the free world of thinking and caring people, something Trump is decidedly not. He said, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” This has gone down far as to create open speculation that perhaps the European countries had better prepare to defend themselves against Russia without the help of the U.S.
I have often spoken of how Trump is the perfect example of psychosocial projection. Whatever he accuses another of, he is guilty of. He knows in his heart, or whatever he has that pumps blood to his body, that he is a deplorable person who does others wrong and brings harm to the world, so he constantly accuses other people of lying, stealing, cheating, losing and any other bad outcome or unethical behavior you can imagine. If he accuses someone of something, it is because he knows that is what he has done, is doing or most certainly would or will do if given the opportunity. Very few businessmen have gained so much prominence on the back of not paying their bills as Donald Trump has. Even my friend who is an ardent supporter of Trump (he just sent me pictures of he and his wife at some Palm Beach gala where the Pillow Guy and Ted Cruz were in attendance and allowing photo opportunities), tells how he built a dock for Trump at the Trump Marina in Atlantic City back in the day and got stiffed by Trump for the $5 million construction cost. He one-upped Trump by parking a nasty construction scow at the dock until Trump paid him and claims that Trump’s actions do not reflect badly on the Donald because it was all “just business”. Wrong. That is not business, that is fraud, and there is, indeed, a big difference.
An alarm company does not encourage and invite thieves into the home of people who are delinquent on their alarm bills. That would be illegal and breach a sacred trust. That is what leg-breaking gangsters do when someone refuses to pay their bookie. NATO leadership is not the Cosa Nostra protection racket. Trump just doesn’t get it or maybe he gets it too well the way Tony Soprano got it. Your friends are not your friends for your convenience, available to be thrown under the bus when the need or the whim arises for political flamboyance. Alliances on the geopolitical stage should be sacred and while sometimes they are entered into hesitantly for convenience and sometimes even disbanded when they become inconvenient, they are not tools or play things to be bandied about on stage to impress a bunch of redneck supporters that you are a big tough bully. We have no alliances more sacred than with Europe, where we shed over 180,000 American lives during WWII, a mere eighty years ago. I incessantly watch WWII movies because my 1950’s childhood was saturated with images and thoughts that we had come through hell and back as a nation in support of the liberation of Europe. What would Vic Morrow of Combat or Gregory Peck of Twelve O’Clock High say to Donald Trump’s obnoxious and un-American suggestion about our NATO partners are not really our partners?
I have never understood people who won’t or choose not to pay their bills. I am certain that I am blessed in generally being able to earn enough or have enough in the bank to pay my bills on a timely basis. I understand that others are sometimes not so lucky. I still have a number of friends or acquaintances to whom I have lent money or provided services who have not repaid me or paid their bills. I don’t like it much, but I see a distinct difference between people who are well meaning and simply cannot pay for one reason or another and those who have the wherewithal and choose not to pay. I spent five years in the 1980’s trying to collect $4 billion of defaulted sovereign debt to countries in the less developed parts of the world like Latin America. It was an eye opening exercise and it had more to do with the sanctity of contracts than anything else. There are those who cannot pay and those who choose to not pay because it is opportunistically possible to use the legal system to parry those obligations away from themselves in the courts or the court of public opinion. We had a funny situation where if these countries had both private direct bank loans and publicly traded bonds, they treated them very differently. They would choose to not pay the loans, but always try to stay current on the bonds. The thinking was very clear to us as bankers. If you stiff a bank, people think that’s an issue for the bank, and who ever has sympathy for a bank? But if you defaulted on public bonds, you were fucking with your creditworthiness on the global stage and that would hurt you more than the bondholders because it would deny you access to the global capital markets for years to come.
Even countries as wayward as Venezuela understood the difference between being a deadbeat and being a financial pariah. They understood that there were consequences for defaulting on publicly traded debt, consequences which might be avoidable or at least forgettable in the private loan markets. There is nothing private about NATO and Trump is simply too stupid and/or set in his fraudulent ways to understand the difference between playing games with a guy who builds a dock for you in Atlantic City and a world that expects you to honor your 80-year obligations to a sacred and highly mutually self-serving alliance like NATO. Everyone has to pay the piper sooner or later and I know that Donald Trump has forgotten that rule in life and feels he is exempt from and immune from anything resembling consequences for his actions or words, but it just simply ain’t so.
I can’t swear that Donald Trump’s NATO comments this weekend are the final invoice on his derelict life of irresponsible behavior, but it should be. The stakes could not be higher and the stage could not be bigger. The man is a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted (91 counts) criminal felon who has been found repeatedly guilty of things like civil fraud, civil rape and almost every form of pillage from Trump University to the Trump Taj Mahal. I know our value system in America has suffered erosion over the last eighty years. I understand that being a strong man is in vogue on the world stage. I know that there are tens of millions of Americans who are mad as hell for whatever lack of success they have had in their lives or for whatever tax bill that they don’t want to pay and they are screaming from the rooftops like Howard Beale in Network and that they aren’t going to take it anymore. But sooner or later, and perhaps this time thanks to his NATO rants, Donald Trump will end up paying the piper.