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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrumps Treasury Secretary Pick is a Lucky Man. Very Lucky.
Last edited Mon Dec 12, 2016, 11:36 AM - Edit history (1)
Trumps Treasury Secretary Pick is a Lucky Man. Very Lucky.
by Jesse Eisinger
ProPublica, Dec. 1, 2016, 10:14 a.m.
Steven Mnuchin has a long history of coming out ahead, even in questionable deals.
Steven Mnuchin has made a career out of being lucky.
The former Goldman Sachs banker nominated to become Donald Trumps treasury secretary had the perspicacity to purchase a collapsed subprime mortgage lender soon after the financial crisis, getting a sweet deal from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Now, if hes confirmed, he will likely be able to take advantage of a tax perk given to government officials.
Mnuchin was born into a family of Wall Street royalty. His father was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs for 30 years, serving in top management. He and his brother landed at the powerful firm, too. After making millions in mortgage trading, Mnuchin struck out on his own, creating a hedge fund and building a record of smart and well-timed investment moves.
He dodged disaster when he inherited his mothers portfolio. She was a longtime investor with Bernie Madoff, the largest Ponzi schemer in American history. After she died in early 2005, Mnuchin and his brother quickly liquidated her investments, making $3.2 million. The Madoff trustee, Irving Picard, sued to retrieve the money from the Mnuchins, as he did from other Ponzi scheme winners, contending that they were fake gains. A court ruled that Picard could only claw back money from those who had cashed out within two years before the collapse. The Mnuchins, having pulled out roughly three years before, got to keep their Madoff money. That something was dodgy about Madoff was an open secret on Wall Street.
After the financial crisis, the FDIC seized IndyMac, whose irresponsible mortgage loans failed as the housing bubble burst. Desperate to offload the bank, the FDIC subsidized the takeover by sheltering Mnuchin and his team of investors, including hedge fund managers John Paulson and George Soros, from losses. The investors injected $1.55 billion into the bank in 2009. They changed the name to OneWest and five years later, sold it to lender CIT for more than $3 billion, doubling their investment...
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https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-treasury-secretary-pick-steven-mnuchin-is-a-lucky-man
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Trumps Treasury Secretary Pick is a Lucky Man. Very Lucky. (Original Post)
think
Dec 2016
OP
longship
(40,416 posts)1. I love how Keith Olbermann pronounces his last name.