Trump May Pick Hard-Core ‘Whites Only’ Banker for Treasury Secretary

Remember Steve Mnuchin, the Goldman Sachs guy who became President-elect Donald Trump’s chief fundraising guy during this year’s campaign?

He could be The Donald’s pick for Treasury Secretary.

Mnuchin followed up his 17-year run as a Goldman Sachs banker — where he led the firm’s mortgage-backed trading group and also became the investment bank’s chief information officer — by collaborating with partners and government-funded corporate welfare to buy IndyMac, a failed California bank known for the kinds of exotic mortgages that helped to create the 2008 financial crisis.

Under Mnuchin’s leadership, IndyMac became OneWest — essentially a Whites-only bank. according to complaints, that became a serial home snatcher in neighborhoods of color. Based on the data gathered by the California Reinvestment Coalition, OneWest’s foreclosure/loan origination ratio in those communities was about 9.2 to 1.

During 2009-2014 the federal government paid OneWest above the first 20 percent of each loan default while the bank made $3 billion in profit.

Think about that for a moment — if the government is going to backstop OneWest’s losses, the bank had a heck of an incentive to be a foreclosing maniac!

And this story makes me think about something I tweeted back in February …

(Laughing) which led to a (presumably) Trump supporter to respond:

https://twitter.com/DJSPINtel/status/701751308869640192

when I last checked Goldman Sachs stock trended upwards in after-hours trading.

I’m speculating that Trump is being set up for a major fall. Perhaps I should write a piece about that soon … ?

song currently stuck in my head: “risin’ to the top” – keni burke