By Robert P. Bomboy
How's your German?
Many of us took German as a foreign language in high school.
I was a teacher once over on the hill where the old Shamokin
High School taught college classes. For the story I want to tell, you need only
one word: Deutsche.
Yes, Johnny, Deutsche means German. Put it together
with Bank and you have Deutsche Bank.
Here in Shamokin we don't hear much about the Deutsche Bank,
though it's Germany's largest. It's been having a lot of difficulties, hit by corruption scandal after
corruption scandal. It was fined more than $630 million for failing to prevent
$10 billion in Russian money-laundering – and has paid $7.2 billion to settle a
lingering bond mis-selling scandal. Deutsche Bank's money-laundering links to
Russia came out last August in a New Yorker Magazine investigative
article titled "The Moscow Laundromat."
The bank has a long-term
connection to Donald Trump and his family - including a particularly amazing
story that we didn't know about when we voted for the President last fall.
Deutsche Bank's New York
office is one of the few on Wall Street still willing to lend to the Trump
empire. It also lends millions to Trump’s extended family, including his
son-in-law Jared Kushner. Weeks before last fall's election, the bank
refinanced most of the $370 million of debt against retail spaces that
Kushner’s company owns in midtown Manhattan.
Those of us around here who
have to balance our checking accounts, might think it's amazing that the bank
will still lend to Trump, after a trick he pulled back in 2008.
When he borrowed $640
million in 2005, Trump gave his personal guarantee that he would pay it back,
but when the first big payment came due, he reneged. It was 2008
and Trump said the Great Recession that year was an act of God equivalent to an
earthquake.
He said that, since no one
could have anticipated it, and it wasn't his fault, he didn't have to pay back
anything. Nada. Nothing. And he got away with it. He had once said:
"I figured it was the banks' problem, not mine. What the hell did I
care."
Can you imagine where we'd
be if we did that?
The bank and Trump finally
reached an agreement in 2010. Then the bank gave him more money.
He owes Deutsche Bank about $300 million right now.
So Why?
More and more people think
that where there's smoke, there's fire:
Congressman Joe Crowley,
chairman of the House of Representatives' Democratic Caucus, says, "When a
foreign-owned bank that is under investigation by the Department of Justice
holds hundreds of millions in personally guaranteed debt for the president,
that is problematic for ethical, diplomatic, and judicial reasons."
This is part of the Trump
Administration's Russian connection. We need an independent investigation, a
Special Prosecutor.
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