Advertisement Wolf Richter: Mnuchin as Sears Director Oversaw Asset Stripping, Underfunding of Pension; Faces Conflict as Treasury Secretary Posted on January 21, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. It is frustrating to see the Democrats dissipate energy on “Russian stooge” hysterics and fail to have a coherent approach for achieving their supposed aim of stymieing Trump. While only a small handful of Cabinet nominees in the modern era have failed to win confirmation, the hearings can still allow the opposition to set down some markers.
Mnuchin is one of Trump’s worst picks by virtue of being a bog-standard bankster-loyal Rubinite on macroeconomic policy (strong dollar, budget hawk), having a been the CEO of an unusually predatory mortgage servicer, yet unlike other members of the Goldman partner club that have been up for the Treasury, lacking relevant experience....
? The Worst of Wall Street: Meet Donald Trump’s Finance Chairman Will Trump’s supporters notice the greedy excesses of a top campaign hire? By Peter Dreier MAY 10, 2016 ? Throughout presidential campaign, Donald Trump has criticized Wall Street bankers for their excessive political influence, attacked hedge fund managers for getting away with “murder” under the current tax code, and claimed that he would self-fund his campaign to avoid being beholden to special interests. “The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country,” Trump said on “Face the Nation” recently. “These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.”
But now Trump has tapped Steve Mnuchin, a 53-year-old Wall Street hedge fund and banking mogul, to be his campaign’s national finance chair.
Trump’s earlier rhetoric aside, it’s actually a good match. Mnuchin is CEO of Dune Capital Management, a hedge fund has had business dealings with Trump. Both Trump and Mnuchin earned their first fortunes the old fashion way: they inherited it. Trump took over his father Fred’s real estate empire and expanded it through questionable business practices. Mnuchin, also the scion of a wealthy and well-connected family, graduated from Yale in 1985 and soon wound up working at Goldman Sachs, where his father Robert had been a general partner.
Both Trump and Mnuchin have run businesses accused of widespread racial discrimination, and they both represent the excessive wealth and greed of the billionaire developer and banker class. And both men have hedged their political bets, donating big bucks to Democrats as well as Republicans.
Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for seventeen years, where he eventually became an executive vice president. According to the Wall Street Journal, he left in 2002 “at the age of 39 with a reported $46 million stake in the bank.” He was recruited by his Yale roommate, Eddie Lampert, to join ESL, a hedge fund, as vice chairman. A few months later, he jumped to SFM Capital Management as its CEO. But within a few months he changed jobs again, leaving SFM to co-found Dune Capital with his former Goldman colleagues Daniel Neidich and Chip Seelig.
In 2009, Mnuchin helped assemble a group of investors (including computer capitalist Michael Dell, financier George Soros, private equity investor Christopher Flowers, and hedge fund titan John Paulson) to buy IndyMac Bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as part of a sweetheart deal. They renamed it OneWest Bank and kept its headquarters in Pasadena. ... ? Mnuchin and his OneWest colleagues were happy to enrich themselves at the government’s expense, but when it came to their customers, they displayed little mercy or compassion. In 2009, according to the New York Post, a judge called OneWest’s behavior “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive” when it tried to foreclose on a New York family. The judge branded the bank’s conduct as “inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious.”
Also in 2009, OneWest had the locks changed on the home of a Minneapolis woman in the middle of a blizzard, even after the company sent her a letter stating “You expressed concern that at the end of the redemption period … you and your mother will be evicted from the property…Rest assured, that will not take place due to the rescission of the foreclosure sale.”
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