1/Today's @bopinion post is about Trump's taxes, and what they show about how America allocates capital.
We appear to have some big problems.
2/Trump has a bunch of businesses that lose money. Our financial system has lent him money to throw into unsuccessful golf courses, hotels, and so
3/A lot of these loans are loans that Trump hasn't even paid back yet, using loopholes in the tax system to avoid paying taxes on those unpaid debts.
Why would creditors give money to a guy who wastes the money on bad businesses and doesn't even pay them back?
4/One seemingly obvious answer is that capital is just really cheap these days. Companies are able to borrow more easily than at any time in the last few decades.
5/But this presents us with a mystery.
Why hasn't an abundance of cheap capital caused the return on financial capital to fall? Interest rates are low, but stock returns have held up strongly.