How does Trump think he can make America great again,
when he can't even make Atlantic City great again? Even with all the help he's had from Chris Christie?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html?_r=0
How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions
On the presidential campaign trail, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, often boasts of his success in Atlantic City, of how he outwitted the Wall Street firms that financed his casinos and rode the value of his name to riches. A central argument of his candidacy is that he would bring the same business prowess to the Oval Office, doing for America what he did for his companies.
“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”
His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and countless players — to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital. But a close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by The New York Times leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/articles/2016-04-21/atlantic-city-crisis-shows-casino-gambling-is-a-bad-bet
Atlantic City made a bad bet on casinos and lawmakers should learn from its mistakes.
At first glance, Atlantic City's current crisis bears little resemblance to those of Detroit, Puerto Rico and the other recent cases of fiscal catastrophe. The city is on the brink of bankruptcy due almost exclusively to a bad bet on casinos: around 20,000 industry jobs and half of annual gaming revenues have been lost in the last decade.
But though governments can go broke for any number of reasons, the solutions to their distress tend to be broadly similar. Atlantic City can learn many lessons from how other cities have dealt with insolvency.
First, unionized employees will have to make major concessions. This has been a sticking point between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Vincent Prieto, the pro-union speaker of the New Jersey Assembly. Christie wants to take over Atlantic City and give state appointees the authority to break labor contracts. Prieto has blocked the governor's plan, saying, "We don't need to destroy collective bargaining rights to fix Atlantic City." Prieto is raising false hopes. Not only is most city spending bound up in salaries and benefits, state and local officials cannot hope for any concessions from corporate creditors without sacrifices by labor.
SNIP
= new reply since forum marked as read
