Steve Mnuchin

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</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>bak </b>919</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 22 an</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>after his father-in-law left the White House, Jared Kushner got a $2 billion golden parachute—from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Kushner predictably started a private equity firm despite his lack of experience in private equity, and went to the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), asking for an “investment.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The professionals in charge of screening possible investments for the PIF raised a series of objections only to be overruled days later by the fund’s board, which is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner became close during his time as a senior White House adviser.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The objections to investing in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners,</b>&nbsp;included “’the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management’;<strong>&nbsp;</strong>the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for ‘the bulk of the investment and risk’; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them ‘unsatisfactory in all aspects’; a proposed asset management fee that ‘seems excessive’; and ‘public relations risks’ from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, according to minutes of the panel’s meeting last June 30,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><em>The New York Times&nbsp;</em>reports</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reason given internally was that Kushner was worth the risk despite his inexperience and potential public relations problems, in order to “capitalize on the capabilities of Affinity’s founders’ deep understanding of different government policies and geopolitical systems.” That’s a lot of words when you could just say “buying access and influence.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As a measure of how much the eventual bin Salman-led decision to hand over $2 billion to Kushner was driven by relationships,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Steven Mnuchin, the former Trump treasury secretary</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">, also started a<b> private equity firm and went to Saudi Arabia asking for money.</b></span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b> He got $1 billion despite having relevant experience in the field.</b> Kushner is also getting a higher asset management fee from the PIF than Mnuchin is.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Few other investors have bought what Kushner was selling. According to public filings, the main fund at Affinity Partners had just $2.5 billion invested. It sounds like he’s basically owned by Saudi Arabia at this point. But then, he did a lot to earn this kind of loyalty when he was in a position to do so.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a side note on the brokenness of the traditional media, check out this framing:&nbsp;<b>“Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guys. You really don’t need ethics experts to tell you that. Everyone can see it. Nor do you need to include the waffling “the appearance of.” It’s blatantly corrupt, even if we don’t know if it’s more of a thank you for Jared’s help providing cover on the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or more of a down payment on future services should Trump make it back to the White House. And it’s business as usual for all of Team Trump.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></p><p class="yiv2480537194headline3" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mnuchin-ivanka-trump/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mnuchin-ivanka-trump/</a></font></p><p class="yiv2480537194headline3" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">nixed imf steve mnu</p><p class="yiv2480537194headline3" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Complete bombshell’: Former top USPS official reveals ‘disturbing’ new details of DeJoy selection and Mnuchin sabotage of mail service</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Common Dreams August 21, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his first public remarks since resigning from the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors in protest at the end of April, David Williams on Thursday offered a number of alarming&nbsp;<b>new details surrounding the selection of Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy as postmaster general and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s efforts to exert influence over mail operations and finances.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Williams, the former vice chairman of the USPS Board of Governors with decades of federal government experience, testified to the Congressional Progressive Caucus that what he witnessed in his final months at the Postal Service was unprecedented, detailing how Mnuchin required members of the supposedly independent board to “come to his office to kiss the ring and receive his blessing before confirmation” and made “illegal” demands of officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Corruption, plain and simple. Not only is Louis DeJoy a Trump crony and clearly unqualified to be Postmaster General but he also has significant financial conflicts of interest that make him eager to destroy the USPS altogether. We won’t let him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">—Rep. Pramila Jayapal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Secretary has called over board members to provide instructions and requests and express his displeasure, which is really striking. I’m not sure I’ve run into that before, where one department is trying to run another department,” said Williams, who previously served as USPS inspector general. “Normally you would simply reject the effort and report it to Congress.”</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Williams told lawmakers that the removal of USPS mailboxes in several states was specifically advocated by Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was reportedly involved in the recruitment of DeJoy for the postmaster general position.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The blue boxes were maybe the most interesting of all,” said Williams, a Democrat who was appointed to the Board of Governors by President Donald Trump. “Those were not part of ongoing plans. To my knowledge, as a matter of fact… Secretary Mnuchin wanted that done. His study of the Postal Service asked that it be done.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In response to Williams’ account of Mnuchin’s interference at the independent agency, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said the treasury secretary should be called—and, if necessary, subpoenaed—to testify before Congress.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This hearing is a complete bombshell,” tweeted David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, which first reported that Williams resigned from the Board of Governors in protest.</font></div><div>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Williams also offered an inside look at the process that led to the Board of Governors’ selection and May appointment of DeJoy, a former logistics executive with zero experience working for the Postal Service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Asked whether the board interviewed other qualified candidates for the postmaster general role, Williams answered in the affirmative and characterized DeJoy as uniquely unfit for the job, recounting that he had to be coached through his interviews</b>. Williams said DeJoy’s appointment was pushed by John Barger, a board member and Republican donor who—according to Williams—helped DeJoy “finish a number of sentences where he got stuck” and “explained to the board what Mr. DeJoy meant during the presentation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) called Williams’ description of the selection process “very, very disturbing.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Williams’ testimony was “stunning.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Williams’ revelations came just hours before DeJoy is set to appear before the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he is expected to face questions about his sweeping policy changes that caused massive mail backlogs across the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A day after DeJoy vowed to suspend the operational changes until after the November election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the postmaster general “frankly admitted” to her that he has “no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes, and other key mail infrastructure that have been removed and that plans for adequate overtime, which is critical for the timely delivery of mail, are not in the works.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a letter to the USPS Board of Governors on Wednesday, 90 House Democrats demanded the immediate removal of DeJoy for using his brief tenure as postmaster general “to sabotage the United States Postal Service.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Despite recent claims by Mr. DeJoy that implementation of certain changes may be delayed,” the lawmakers wrote, “he has already done considerable damage to the institution and we believe his conflicts of interest are insurmountable.”</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/mnuchin-suggests-taxpayers-will-have-to-pay-back-money-unless-trump-is-reelected/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/mnuchin-suggests-taxpayers-will-have-to-pay-back-money-unless-trump-is-reelected/</a></div><div>
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/americas/venezuela-russia-sanctions-trump.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/americas/venezuela-russia-sanctions-trump.html</a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div><b>U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Russian Oil Company Supporting Venezuela’s Leader</b></div><div><b>The penalties seek to pressure President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to give up power, nearly two years after he was re-elected in a widely disputed vote.</b></div><div>
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</div><div>By Lara Jakes</div><div>Feb. 18, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed tough economic sanctions against a Russian oil giant that is keeping Venezuela’s ruling government afloat, gambling that the newest penalties against President Nicolás Maduro will not roil global oil prices.</div><div>
</div><div>The broad sanctions were levied against Rosneft Trading, a subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled Rosneft Oil Company, and Didier Casimiro, the subsidiary’s president and board chairman. Mr. Casimiro is also identified on the Rosneft website as the parent company’s vice president for refining.</div><div>
</div><div><b>The sanctions may have only a limited impact on global markets, experts said. Venezuela’s oil exports have dwindled since the Trump administration began a campaign last year to pressure Mr. Maduro into leaving power, after his widely disputed re-election in May 2018.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Oil markets seemed to shrug off the sanctions, dipping about a half-percent in trading on Tuesday with prices at around $51.80 per barrel.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the sanctions will lash Venezuela’s already-faltering economy. They also follow a highly public effort by Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition leader, to pressure allies to take a more aggressive stance against Mr. Maduro. On Tuesday,&nbsp;<b>Mr. Guaidó called the sanctions “a victory” on Twitter, adding, “Those who support the dictator, whoever they are, wherever they come from, should assume the consequences.”</b></span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Venezuela is exporting about 70 percent of its oil through Rosneft in what&nbsp;<b>Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin described as the “looting of Venezuela’s oil assets by the corrupt Maduro regime.”</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“This is a campaign of pressure,” said Elliott Abrams, the State Department’s special envoy for Venezuela policy. “And the pressure continues to mount.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>“I would not say that any individual step can be calculated to bring an end to the crisis,” Mr. Abrams said. “But I think this is a very significant step, and I think you will see companies all over the world in the oil sector now move away from dealing with Rosneft Trading.”</div><div>
</div><div>Administration officials insisted that the global oil market was stable enough to withstand the new penalties against Rosneft or any entity that does business with it. Officials also said Rosneft’s customers would be given 90 days to unwind themselves from the Russian shipping company.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Mr. Maduro has led Venezuela’s economy into shambles and prompted an exodus of millions of people into neighboring South American states. The sanctions are among the biggest hits to Venezuela’s economy since the United States banned Venezuela’s state oil company last January, said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuela energy expert at Rice University in Houston.</b></div><div>
</div><div>“Rosneft will now have to think how much Venezuela is worth from a business standpoint, compared to the costs of remaining under sanctions,” Mr. Monaldi said.</div><div>
</div><div>But, he added, the sanctions could misfire if Rosneft concludes that the higher costs of doing business in Venezuela are justified by the geopolitical benefit of helping out Russia’s key ally in South America.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rosneft sells about two-thirds of Venezuela’s oil, largely to Asia, and often by obscuring the cargo’s source and destination. Officials said Mr. Maduro was taking the profits from the oil sales facilitated by Rosneft to hang onto power, in part by bolstering the Venezuelan military and its harsh crackdown against the public.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Rosneft’s trading subsidiary was created in 2011 to help its Moscow-based parent company carry out foreign projects, including shipping crude oil. In the last few years, faced with American and European sanctions, Rosneft has pushed deeply into places like Cuba, China, Egypt and Vietnam.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Its two largest customers are China and India, both of which have struggled to procure sufficient oil supplies after the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Iran. In the case of India, where Mr. Trump is scheduled to visit next week, the government in Delhi has been forced to find new suppliers — including from the United States.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Additionally, the world is currently flooded with oil since the coronavirus is cutting millions of barrels a day of demand in the Chinese market. Curtailing Venezuela’s 700,000 barrels of daily production should have little if any impact on global oil prices.</div><div>
</div><div>Clearview Energy Partners, a consultancy, described Tuesday’s sanctions as “somewhat limited in nature.” It can take weeks, however, for market effects from sanctions to be fully seen.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Abrams noted that global oil prices were down compared with when the Trump administration began its sanctions campaign against Mr. Maduro’s government.</div><div>
</div><div>“We’re not trying to raise oil prices — we’re trying to diminish the amount of money available to the Maduro regime,” Mr. Abrams told reporters at the State Department.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump administration officials outlined a series of transactions and planned shipments over the last year — including millions of barrels of crude oil — as evidence of Rosneft’s support to Mr. Maduro. Last month alone, officials said, Rosneft helped deliver two million barrels of crude to West Africa from Venezuela.</div><div>
</div><div>Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela; Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia; and Clifford Krauss from Houston.</div><div>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-treasury-department-is-now-helping-a-hunter-biden-probe-while-furiously-protecting-the-president/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-treasury-department-is-now-helping-a-hunter-biden-probe-while-furiously-protecting-the-president/</a>
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</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Climate activist Greta Thunberg</b> told the World Economic Forum that governments should divest from fossil fuels given the catastrophe of the climate crisis. In response, United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sneered at her activism and told her to go study economics. Just one problem:&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=9f45cb3dbc746a1455d06962899fd2d787762b96aac6cc450d96b40aab2f7b637aa02293b69cd6bd24789ccf57c20157a43913628130b81b" title="Thunberg was right">Thunberg was right</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin’s own government released a National Climate Assessment in 2018 that said that climate change, if left unaddressed, would cost the U.S. economy $500 billion per year. A massive new report by the Bank for International Settlements also has linked climate change to a possible financial crisis. Furthermore, actual economist Gernot Wagner told The Washington Post that Mnuchin is completely wrong about Economics 101, using a delightful analogy about rabbits on a communal meadow.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-wing media sites were thrilled at Mnuchin’s attack, with some suggesting that Thunberg had a mind full of mush and others saying that people like her should be seen and not heard. In short: it was the standard information-free bullying that you would expect.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin then dropped by CNBC's Squawk Box to discuss his remarks. What ensued was a cavalcade of lies and climate denial.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The softball CNBC interview had Mnuchin throwing out a number of right-wing talking points on climate change and generally showing that he has no understanding of the issue. Co-anchor Joe Kernan just egged him on, even suggesting that climate alarmism was driving increasing discussions of the climate crisis.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=9f45cb3dbc746a149b10b2386aff904c78f087a206d5301ea2296565d125cae62cb8453b19abd91a4f4d024e8cefaf5c4fcc5c4511e30ee3" title="the entire conversation">the entire conversation</a>&nbsp;seemed to take place in a universe where climate change is not an urgent problem, where Australia is not on fire, where ocean life is not dying, and where the United States is not repeatedly hit with climate-fueled catastrophes like wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding. The only voice of reason in the discussion was co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin, who used JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon of all people as a counterpoint to what Mnuchin was saying. The media should be touting what experts say, not what bank CEOs are saying.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">c ded v an 120</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Is Mar-a-Lago a nexus for Trump’s apparent influence peddling and corruption?</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anywhere Trump shows up is a nexus for his influence peddling and corruption. It could be his golf courses or Mar-a-Lago or somewhere else. Gift-giving is a form of currency, influence-buying. Certainly Trump knows that he can buy loyalty from people. And what’s a better way to buy loyalty than if you’re president of United States and you know you’re going to assassinate the No. 2 guy in Iran and that it’s going to move markets.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Jan. 2, the markets were up big. Soleimani was assassinated at one in the morning, Baghdad time, after the markets here had closed. There was some night trading, which was obviously going to make the markets go down the next day. Killing Gen. Soleimani was going to make the Middle East much more unstable. And what better way to reward your buddies — who were already your buddies, because they’re at Mar-a-Lago, to begin with, on New Year’s Eve — than with this little gift? It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How would one send those signals? How does insider trading work?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Who are the people who know what is going to happen? Who knows about the trade docs? Steve Mnuchin, Robert Lighthizer, Wilbur Ross. Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump, Trump’s kids, Trump’s son-in-law.</span>&nbsp;These people who do have knowledge of certain events are either giving gifts to friends or trying to continue to buy loyalty</b>. What I think is more likely is that there are surrogate traders who are making these trades with inside information. They make the money and then stash it in some sort of account to be gotten back to after they leave office. But again, I don’t know. The people who would know are not cooperating. The head of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said that my article in October should have been written in crayon because it was so childlike.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">To reiterate: The people who were supposed to be watching and regulating are somehow complicit, looking away, indifferent, etc.?..</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new 120 an</font></div><div><section class="home-featured-cat mag-cat-style-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; clear: both; width: 779.986px;"><div class="home-featured-cat-content style-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px -15px 40px; padding: 0px; display: table; width: calc(100% + 30px); vertical-align: top;"><div class="cat-right" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 15px; width: 404.545px; float: left; display: inline-block;"><div class="mag-post-box hentry" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 374.545px; overflow: hidden; display: table; border-bottom: none;"><div class="magcat-detail" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/foreclosure-king-steve-mnuchin-tells-greta-thunberg-to-go-study-economics/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Foreclosure King’ Steve Mnuchin tells Greta Thunberg to go study economics</font></a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/jake-johnson/" title="Posts by Jake Johnson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jake Johnson</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams/" title="Posts by Common Dreams" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Common Dreams</a></font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div></div></div></div></section></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mofo</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trump-quietly-handed-billions-more-in-tax-breaks-to-huge-corporations-report/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trump-quietly-handed-billions-more-in-tax-breaks-to-huge-corporations-report/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omg offshore</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trumps-treasury-dept-pushes-plot-to-fan-the-flames-of-corporate-tax-dodging/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trumps-treasury-dept-pushes-plot-to-fan-the-flames-of-corporate-tax-dodging/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s Treasury Dept. pushes plot to fan the flames of <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">corporate tax dodging</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 1, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department on Thursday took the first step toward eliminating remaining regulations designed to prevent corporations from avoiding U.S. taxes by storing profits overseas, a move critics decried as yet another harmful giveaway to big business.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive,</span> said in a statement that the 2017 GOP tax law—which disproportionately benefited the rich—rendered Obama-era rules against offshore tax avoidance “obsolete” by significantly reducing the corporate tax rate.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, disagreed with Mnuchin’s assessment, warning in a statement that the Treasury Department’s plan “only provides an opening for corporations to again dodge their taxes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The corporations that got a massive taxpayer handout are getting another gift from Donald Trump,” said Wyden. “The Obama administration had essentially shut down inversion—transactions whose only purpose is to help big multinational corporations move overseas to avoid paying taxes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Bloomberg, the Treasury Department’s proposal, detailed in a policy guidance (pdf) released Thursday, “could make it easier for firms to use accounting tactics to minimize their U.S. earnings and inflate their foreign profits, which are frequently taxed at rates lower than the current 21 percent domestic corporate levy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The existing regulations were aimed at stopping American companies from moving their headquarters to a lower-tax country, a process known as a corporate inversion,” noted Bloomberg.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Contrary to Mnuchin’s claim that the GOP’s 2017 tax law eliminated incentives for corporations to shift profits overseas, advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers have argued the law made it easier for businesses to avoid U.S. taxes.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will allow companies to avoid taxes on $235 billion in profits each year going forward,” a coalition of more than 50 progressive organizations led by Americans for Tax Fairness wrote in a letter (pdf) to Congress last May.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Moreover, the law created new incentives for multinational corporations to move their real operations offshore,” the groups said. “The law guarantees that U.S. multinational corporations will pay at most one-half the domestic tax rate on their offshore earnings, with many companies paying little or nothing in taxes on these earnings.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1119</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">invert yield curve; homewreckers book 8 mil foreclosures; big % llc shell corps; // CDO; R wolff says banks can't deal with hit 1/2 of Gt Recession , get loans to cover loans; </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">mnuchin etc wilbur recalled gov't baillout after S&L</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">; mnu </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">sez put 1.x billion but pain nothing for indybank and then got subsidies to foreclose?! // get car for free, put some bucks in then pocket total profit 11/8/19</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>steve mnu paid 0 for indy bank,</b> and gov't guar lose no money, sold to buddy in same blg (bunch of pluto-crats ) soros, paulsen, wilbur</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">extensive interview:&nbsp;<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-23-2019/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-23-2019/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aaron glantz homewreckers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aaron glantz homewreckers</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/another-betrayal-trump-promised-to-bring-offshore-profits-home-but-hes-doing-the-opposite/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/another-betrayal-trump-promised-to-bring-offshore-profits-home-but-hes-doing-the-opposite/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 1019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/another-betrayal-trump-promised-to-bring-offshore-profits-home-but-hes-doing-the-opposite/" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" color="color" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" font-size="font-size" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" line-height="line-height" display="display" inline="inline" important="important">Another betrayal’: Trump promised to bring offshore profits home — but he’s doing the opposite</a></font></div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/igor-derysh/" title="Posts by Igor Derysh" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Igor Derysh</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/" title="Posts by Salon " class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Salon</a></font></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration is considering a rule change that would make it easier for American companies to stash money offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, despite the president’s repeated campaign promises…</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Another betrayal’: Trump promised to bring offshore profits home — but he’s doing the opposite</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Igor Derysh / Salon October 11, 2019</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration is considering a rule change that would make it easier for American companies to stash money offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, despite the president’s repeated campaign promises to bring offshore cash back home.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Treasury Department is looking to weaken or eliminate Obama-era regulations aimed at preventing companies from moving their income to their overseas branches to lower their U.S. tax bill, Bloomberg reports.&nbsp;<b>Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, instead wants to replace the existing rules with “something more business friendly.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The move would be a boon to large corporations, who already saw their taxes permanently slashed by the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited companies at the expense of individual taxpayers.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to the 2016 rule, companies were able to move money to their offshore branches that they could then lend to their American branches, while deducting the interest from the tax bill. The Obama-era rule allowed the IRS to consider these inter-company loans as equity, which eliminated a key incentive for companies to move profits overseas.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats slammed the administration for trying to weaken rules that allow tax avoidance when it should be creating tougher ones.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“One of the Trump administration’s top priorities has been making it as easy as possible for the wealthiest Americans and corporations to cheat and avoid taxes,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “Rules preventing the offshoring of corporate profits should be strengthened — not weakened.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Critics of the rule say it is no longer necessary because the tax cuts made these inter-company loans less attractive, according to Bloomberg.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mark Mazur, Obama’s former assistant secretary for tax policy at Treasury when the rule was created, disputed that claim.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“On the face, they do slightly different things and so it’s hard to believe that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took care of every one of those dimensions,“ he told Bloomberg.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On its face, Republican criticism of the rule simply doesn’t align with reality.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump had earlier claimed that the 2017 tax cuts would bring back $4 trillion in offshore profits that had been stashed overseas. Through the end of 2018, his claim fell about $3.3 trillion short, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The tax law slashed the rate on repatriated profits from 35 percent to a onetime 15.5 percent tax rate on cash and an 8 percent tax on non-cash assets. Trump claimed that the change would bring back $4 trillion in offshore profits, even though banks estimated that only about $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion was held offshore by U.S. companies. Corporations brought back less than $670 billion from the time the tax law was enacted until the end of 2018.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Researchers also rejected Trump’s claim that the repatriated profits would boost investment in the U.S.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Policy changes have a relatively small impact on hiring and investment decisions if firms have relatively easy access to credit markets,” said a 2018 report from researchers at the University of Richmond and Claremont McKenna College.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, companies have been using their tax savings for stock buybacks, in which companies buy back their own stock to return more money to shareholders.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A report from Citigroup found that companies in the S&P 500 spent more than $800 billion on stock buybacks in 2018, far more than the total amount spent on investing in new equipment or the total amount of repatriated cash.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, introduced a bill that would close loopholes in the tax law to equalize tax rates on domestic and foreign profits.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“President Trump promised the American people he’d end the march of jobs and profits overseas,” Whitehouse said in a statement at the time. “Instead, he’s doled out massive new tax breaks that reward offshoring.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats again called out Trump for trying to help major corporations rather than workers.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Another betrayal by President Trump — choosing corporations over American workers,” wrote Sen.<b>&nbsp;Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “Shameful.”</b></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">PR shop for treas dept mnuchin</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-business/democracy-forward-files-official-complaint-coordination-between-fox-business-and"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-business/democracy-forward-files-official-complaint-coordination-between-fox-business-and</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-the-disturbing-reason-officials-say-the-trump-administration-isnt-putting-harriet-tubman-on-the-20-bill/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-the-disturbing-reason-officials-say-the-trump-administration-isnt-putting-harriet-tubman-on-the-20-bill/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">henderson</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">May, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the redesign of the <b>$20 bill featuring abolitionist Harriet Tubman </b>would not be unveiled in 2020 as previously announced. The delay, Mnuchin said, was due to security concerns and technical reasons. But the New York Times’ Alan Rappeport is reporting that according to Treasury Department officials, Mnuchin delayed the Tubman redesign to “avoid the possibility” that President Donald Trump “would</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/us/politics/harriet-tubman-bill.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">cancel the plan outright</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">and create even more controversy.”</span></font></div><div class="p1_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin, according to the Times, seems to believe that the president is so opposed to adding an image of Tubman to the $20 bill that he feared Trump might terminate the project altogether. And by delaying it, Mnuchin at least left open the possibility of the project going forward at some point in the future. Trump has been critical of the project, dismissing it as “pure political correctness” when he was campaigning for president in 2016 — he proposed featuring Tubman on $2 bills instead.</font></p><div class="p2_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin, however, is denying the allegation that the delay came about in order to avoid offending Trump. Last week, the Treasury Department secretary told the New York Times, “Let me assure you, this speculation that we’ve slowed down the process is just not the case.”</font></p><div class="p3_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A Treasury Department employee, who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Times that he or she personally viewed a digital image of the Tubman $20 bill while it was being examined by engravers and U.S. Secret Service officials as recently as May 2018 — and the Tubman redesign process, according to the Times’ source, appeared to be far along at that point.</b></font></p><div class="p4_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The proposal to replace President Andrew Jackson with Tubman on the $20 bill came from Jack Lew, who served as Treasury Department secretary during President Barack Obama’s second term.</font></p><div class="p5_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May, Mnuchin announced that the Tubman version of the $20 bill wouldn’t be unveiled until 2028 — long after Trump is out of office. Mnuchin, during a House Financial Services Committee last month, told Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, “The primary reason we have looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tubman was a key figure in the civil rights struggle in the United States. Born in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1822, Tubman was a slave until the 1840s and battled slavery via the Underground Railroad (a network of secret routes and abolitionist safe houses). And after slavery was abolished in the U.S., Tubman made women’s suffrage a high priority. Tubman was in her early 90s when she died in 1913.</font></p><div class="p7_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This week, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, wrote a letter to Mnuchin asking him to find a way to accelerate the release of the Tubman $20 bill. Hogan wrote, “I hope that you’ll reconsider your decision and instead join our efforts to promptly memorialize Tubman’s life and many achievements.”</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/youre-ordering-me-to-stay-here-rep-maxine-waters-gets-into-heated-exchange-with-steve-mnuchin-as-he-tells-her-to-bang-her-gravel/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">‘You’re ordering me to stay here!’: Rep. Maxine Waters gets into heated exchange with Steve Mnuchin as he tells her to bang her ‘gravel’</font></a><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></h3></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OMG&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/saudis-and-the-us-team-up-to-kill-european-union-effort-to-create-a-dirty-money-blacklist/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/saudis-and-the-us-team-up-to-kill-european-union-effort-to-create-a-dirty-money-blacklist/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>&nbsp;United States and key ally Saudi Arabia saw their lobbying efforts pay off on Friday after the European Commission’s&nbsp;<a href="https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-781_en.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">proposed dirty money blacklist</a>—which included the oil-rich kingdom and several American territories—<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-saudi-moneylaundering-idUSKCN1QI4RZ" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">fizzled</a>.</b></font></p><div class="p1_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Americans fell on us like a tonne of bricks,” an anonymous Brussels official&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3be6cb28-3c40-11e9-b72b-2c7f526ca5d0" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">told the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Financial Times</em></a>.</font></p><div class="p2_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The effort “to protect the integrity of the E.U. financial system,” the commission said last month, included blacklisting 23 territories that&nbsp;<a href="https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-781_en.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">had</a>&nbsp;“strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.” They included American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico as well as Saudi Arabia.</font></p><div class="p3_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, as the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Wall Street Journal</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-countries-block-new-eu-dirty-money-blacklist-11551452467" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported</a>&nbsp;Friday, “European governments, under pressure from Washington and Riyadh, have refused to endorse” the list.</font></p><div class="p4_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The rejection of the governments is a farce at the expense of security,” declared Sven Giegold, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany, in a statement quoted by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-28/eu-states-said-to-object-to-dirty-money-list-after-u-s-outrage" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bloomberg</em></a>. “France and the U.K. want to remove Saudi Arabia and other countries from the list. Spain is protecting Panama. The United States is exerting massive pressure because four U.S. jurisdictions,” he said.</font></p><div class="p5_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Governments must ask themselves whether they are on the side of autocrats or their citizens!</b>” he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/sven_giegold/status/1101437689314885633" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">added</a>&nbsp;in a tweet.</font></p><div class="p6_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">As&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Politico</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-countries-revolt-against-commission-dirty-money-list-vera-jourova/%20" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported</a>, the list, which would need the backing of the European Parliament and Council of the E.U. to go into effect, “is politically sensitive because it has teeth. E.U. banks that handle payments connected to the blacklisted countries and territories would have to conduct ‘enhanced due diligence’ on any cash that moves to and from the E.U. and the blacklisted jurisdictions.”</font></p><div class="p7_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Politico</em>&nbsp;also noted the “intense backlash and behind-the-scenes lobbying from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”</font></p><div class="p8_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The proposal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/01/%20https%3A//home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm610" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">drew</a>&nbsp;ire from the U.S. Treasury Department, which denounced the commission’s methodology, and its head, Secretary Steven Mnuchin, wrote to the commission to denounce the effort, as&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">FT</em>&nbsp;reported.</b></font></p><div class="p9_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190301-us-welcomes-demise-eu-money-laundering-blacklist-plan" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">acknowledged</a>&nbsp;that “we had to spend our energy killing this bad idea.”<b>&nbsp;Saudi Arabia’s King Salman,</b>&nbsp;for his part, also wrote to E.U. leaders about the “surprising and unexpected” list, and warned of its damage to “trade and investment flows between the kingdom and the European Union.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">made $ exploiting loopholes so crazy to see as reformers // clayton</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">liars poker book</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">it takes a pillage</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-november-30-2016/
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the big action on Capitol Hill is on the Democratic side. And they got off to quite a start yesterday when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was called to the House up for both a classified briefing and a closed-door hearimg for the whole House to explain why in the world he decided to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/us/politics/senate-sanctions-oleg-deripaska-russia.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/us/politics/senate-sanctions-oleg-deripaska-russia.html&source=gmail&ust=1547299367121000&usg=AFQjCNG1vVSjp5lo9OwJlb16pOvRpkXXkg" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">lift sanctions</a>&nbsp;on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company practically in the dead of night. (If you haven’t been keeping score, Deripaska is a former associate of Paul Manafort, who reportedly owed him a large sum of money.)</font></p><div class="p9_15" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We don’t know what was said in the classified briefing, but the Democrats were hopping mad about the other one. Apparently Mnuchin was completely unresponsive, reading out a prepared comment and offering up nothing else. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s stiff competition, mind you, but this was one of the worst briefings we’ve received from the Trump administration. The secretary barely testified.” Mnuchin had better get used to a lot more scrutiny.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><h4 class="title" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-weight="font-weight" line-height="line-height" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color"><a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/12/21/steve-mnuchins-path-of-destruction-leads-from-wall-street-to-trumps-treasury_partner/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: 1; outline: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Steve Mnuchin Has a Gift for Ruining Americans’ Lives</font></span></a></h4><div class="article-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; right: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rebecca Burns, David Dayen - December 20, 2018 - Economy for All</font></div></div><div class="article-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; right: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">imi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steve-mnuchin-donald-trump-middle-class-tax-cut-real-thing">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steve-mnuchin-donald-trump-middle-class-tax-cut-real-thing</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">D<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">uring the midterms, President Donald Trump stunned some political commentators with off-the-cuff</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/22/trump-middle-class-tax-cut-924446" style="text-decoration-line: none;">promises</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">that a middle class tax cut "of about 10 percent" was on its way. But this talk died down pretty quickly after the election was over.</span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-18/mnuchin-backs-off-trump-s-promise-of-10-middle-class-tax-cut" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according</a>&nbsp;to Bloomberg News, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin completely refused to discuss the matter while talking about his priority of fixing the 2017 GOP tax cut bill going into the next year:</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin said he’s hoping to work with Congress on “some minor technical corrections” to the law, such as a drafting error that denies retailers and restaurants a tax break when they make renovations. He downplayed the prospect of the middle-class tax cut that Trump campaigned on in the days leading up to the midterm elections.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m not going to comment on whether it is a real thing or not a real thing,” Mnuchin said in a roundtable interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Washington office. “I’m saying for the moment we have other things we’re focused on.”</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" /></font></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin's answer essentially confirmed what many people had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/3/18059108/trump-middle-class-tax-cut-kevin-brady" style="text-decoration-line: none;">expected</a>: the middle class tax cut was not, in fact, a real thing, but just a bunch of empty words Trump threw around in the hope it would help his party keep the House.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, Mnuchin's actual hope of fixing the real tax cut bill is a fool's errand. The law, in addition to being&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/gop-tax-bill-errors-could-impact-your-bottom-line.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">riddled with mistakes</a>, is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/poll-gop-tax-scam-benefits-wealthy" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wildly unpopular</a>, and its main accomplishment is an explosion of stock buybacks that is now&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/buyback-binge-that-s-besting-capex-pays-off-big-in-u-s-stocks" style="text-decoration-line: none;">outpacing normal business spending</a>, while the middle class who were promised they would get the meat and potatoes were left to dry as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/18/16791174/republican-tax-bill-congress-conference-tax-policy-center" style="text-decoration-line: none;">83 percent of the cuts</a>&nbsp;went to the top 1 percent of earners.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The public is by now depressingly used to Trump making up outlandish lies and abandoning them the next day. But the truly craven nature of this last-ditch attempt to manipulate the electorate should not pass unremarked on.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><div><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></b></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/trump-treasury-department-obstructing-russia-investigation">https://www.alternet.org/trump-treasury-department-obstructing-russia-investigation</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">sofar as Congress had made a serious effort to investigate Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, Trump administration has hardly been cooperative.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Indeed, according to a new&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/senate-intel-wants-to-follow-the-money-in-the-russia-probe" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">report</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from BuzzFeed News, civil servants in the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<b style="">Treasury Department voiced concern last year that their department was deliberately seeking to prevent the Senate Intelligence Committee from tracking down financial records of key actors in the Russia affair:</b></span></font></p><blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, Treasury rejected the committee’s request for help from one of its experts, even as Treasury officials have speculated — behind closed doors — that the Senate committee would not be able to follow the twisting financial trail laid out in the documents they had turned over, a path that often passes through offshore shell companies or untraceable cash transactions.&nbsp; In emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News, personnel within Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, discussed in 2017 whether Treasury was trying to thwart the committee’s investigation. Additionally, some FinCEN personnel questioned whether they had the proper legal authority to share confidential information about US persons with committee staffers.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Senators on the Intelligence Committee first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/senate-intelligence-committee-ask-the-treasury-department" style="text-decoration-line: none;">asked</a>&nbsp;the Treasury Department to disclose financial information on Trump and his associates last year. Democratic members of the committee have openly expressed&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/23/politics/mark-warner-treasury-senate-request/index.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">frustration</a>&nbsp;with how slowly the department has cooperated with them.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesman for FinCEN refused to give BuzzFeed a detailed response to the story, saying "We don’t discuss the specifics of requests related to committee investigations."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Treasury Department's purported desire to undermine the Russia investigation squares with a pattern of apparent politically motivated refusals to embrace transparency.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month, the department&nbsp;<a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm426" style="text-decoration-line: none;">announced</a>&nbsp;that the IRS would no longer force tax-exempt dark-money political groups to report the names of certain donors in their filings. This information was not even public to begin with — it was simply used to help the IRS record where political money was coming from — but apparently, even this slightest gesture at disclosure was too much for the Trump administration.</font></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></b></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/buried-fine-print-trump-rule-would-give-25-billion-tax-cut-big-bank-fat-cats">https://www.alternet.org/buried-fine-print-trump-rule-would-give-25-billion-tax-cut-big-bank-fat-cats</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wall Street banks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/18/workers-see-crumbs-biggest-wall-street-banks-have-already-pocketed-25-billion-trump" style="text-decoration-line: none;">continue to enjoy record profits</a>&nbsp;thanks to President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax scam, Trump's Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">—</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">quietly moved to hand big banks yet another major gift on Wednesday by hiding a&nbsp;<a href="https://capitalandmain.com/trumps-treasury-department-hands-banks-a-windfall-0808" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$2.5 billion tax cut</a>&nbsp;in the fine print of an "<a href="https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1027369635811745792" style="text-decoration-line: none;">esoteric</a>" new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/reg-107892-18.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">rule proposal</a>&nbsp;(pdf).</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At first glance, the Trump administration's rule appeared to be little more than a mundane set of regulations aimed at providing owners of&nbsp;<b>so-called pass-through businesses</b>&nbsp;everything they "need to comply with the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," as&nbsp;<em>Reuters</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-passthroughs/u-s-treasury-proposes-tax-rules-on-pass-through-businesses-idUSKBN1KT1RD?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5b6b2b044b738500013d3d56&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter" style="text-decoration-line: none;">put it</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But&nbsp;<em>Capital & Main</em>&nbsp;journalist David Sirota&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1027369635811745792" style="text-decoration-line: none;">decided to take the radical step of actually reading</a>&nbsp;the proposal in its entirety, and he found that the White House's rule also<b>seeks to exclude banking from the "financial services" category</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">—a move that would allow thousands of large banks to take advantage of the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/18/sen-bob-corker-could-save-11-million-year-gop-tax-scam-kickback" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">controversial</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;tax cut for pass-through income included in Trump's tax bill.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp; As they were hashing out the details of their tax bill behind closed doors, Sirota notes, Republican lawmakers included a provision that prohibited businesses in the "financial services" sector from qualifying for the tax cut in an effort to counter "assertions that the bill could enrich big banks."</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, at the direction of bank lobbyists, the Trump administration's new rule asserts that "'financial services' don't include banking," thus allowing "hundreds of banks operating as S corporations—as well as their owners—[to] claim the tax cut," Sirota writes.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to taking the side of bank lobbyists with its new rule, the Trump administration also explicitly "echoed their views" in the fine print of its proposal, Sirota points out.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Banking industry lobbyists pushed for the interpretation—acknowledging that the bill generally blocked pass-through tax cuts for businesses in financial services, but arguing that 'financial services are, however, clearly something other than banking,'" Sirota writes. "The Trump Treasury Department not only sided with the lobbyists, but in the fine print of its new rule, which is now subject to a public comment period before it goes into force, echoed their views."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According&nbsp;Daniel Hemel, a tax law professor at the University of Chicago, the Trump administration's</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;rule change would reward "roughly 2,000 banks around the country that qualify as S corporations."</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"It's a safe bet that most of the S corporation shareholders benefited by today's decision will fall into the upper reaches of the top one percent—</b>not many middle-class folks own a bank," Hemel told&nbsp;<em>Capital & Main</em>. "If you assume a return on assets of around one percent and S corporation bank assets in the range of $400 billion, then the move reduces the total tax liability of S corporation bank shareholders by $300 million per year for 2018 through 2025. We're talking about something like $2.5 billion total."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the Trump White House's latest attempt to reward the wealthy—which comes as wages for most workers are declining—S<b>en. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1027571918986194945" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a>, "It's never been more clear who the Trump administration is really working for."</b></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/irs-just-made-it-easier-powerful-political-nonprofits-conceal-who-donates-them">https://www.alternet.org/irs-just-made-it-easier-powerful-political-nonprofits-conceal-who-donates-them</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has just removed an old IRS rule that required&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/07/17/whos-buying-our-elections-inside-the-shadowy-world-of-dark-money/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">specific types of nonprofit organizations</a>&nbsp;to disclose&nbsp;the identities of their large donors.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Department of Treasury&nbsp;<a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm426" style="text-decoration-line: none;">explained</a>&nbsp;on its website:</font></p><blockquote style=""><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Treasury Department and IRS announced today that the IRS will no longer require certain tax-exempt organizations to file personally-identifiable information about their donors as part of their annual return.&nbsp; The revenue procedure released today does not affect the statutory reporting requirements that apply to tax-exempt groups organized under section 501(c)(3) or section 527, but it relieves other tax-exempt organizations of an unnecessary reporting requirement that was previously added by the IRS.&nbsp; &nbsp;Nearly fifty years ago, Congress directed the IRS to collect donor information from charities that accept tax-deductible contributions.&nbsp; That statutory requirement applies to the majority of tax-exempt organizations, known as section 501(c)(3) organizations, receiving contributions that can be claimed by donors as charitable deductions.&nbsp; This policy provided the IRS information that could be used to confirm contributions to those organizations.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">By regulation, however, the IRS extended the donor reporting requirement to all other tax-exempt organizations—labor unions and volunteer fire departments, <b>issue-advocacy groups</b> and local chambers of commerce, veterans groups and community service clubs.&nbsp; These groups do not generally receive tax deductible contributions, yet they have been required to list the names and addresses of their donors on Schedule B of their annual returns (Form 990).</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As The New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/us/politics/irs-will-no-longer-force-kochs-and-other-groups-to-disclose-donors.html?partner=rss&emc=rss" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>, "the change, which has been long sought by conservatives and Republicans in Congress, will affect labor unions, social clubs and, most notably, many political groups like the National Rifle Association and the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, which collect what is known as 'dark money."'&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Treasury officials said the reporting change would protect privacy and reduce compliance costs for nonprofits, and that the IRS could still request donor information from groups in the rare event that it was needed for tax scrutiny.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Americans shouldn’t be required to send the I.R.S. information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” <b>Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, </b>said in a statement on Monday evening.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Noti's concerns were echoed by Steven Rosenthal from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center."Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s announcement is a <b>thinly-veiled attack on transparency in political campaigns,"</b> Adav Noti, senior director at the Campaign Legal Center and a former associate general at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), told Salon by email. "The information that he is allowing organizations to withhold from the IRS was one of the very few remaining protections for voters against the influence of foreign dark money in elections. So the administration has made a choice to deprive law enforcement agencies of the information they need to detect and deter illegal campaign spending by foreign powers."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"There’s a lot to this administrative rule under the semblance of reducing paperwork," Rosenthal told the Times. "It adds another layer of opaqueness to the tax-exempt funding."</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">By contrast, Republican lawmakers — many of whom claimed that the existing laws had allowed the IRS to inappropriately target various political groups during the administrations of President George W. Bush and Barack Obama — celebrated the new policy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell </b>declared that it was "particularly welcome news to those of us who intently are focused on defending the First Amendment, for those of us who over the years have raised concerns during the last administration about activist regulators punishing free speech and free association. It’s a straightforward, common sense policy decision."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
<b>Similarly, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, </b>chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, declared that "for years, Members of the Ways and Means Committee have fought for an I.R.S. that is accountable to the taxpayer and does not target or single-out any person or entity based on their political beliefs."</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">T</font><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">he Wall Street Journal also lauded the decision in an</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-irs-advance-for-speech-privacy-1531783998" style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; text-decoration-line: none;">editorial</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">&nbsp;</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">on Tuesday:</span></font></p><div class="teads-inread sm-screen" style="overflow: hidden; height: 359px; transition: height 0s; box-sizing: content-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px auto; max-width: 550px;"><div style="position: relative; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important;"><div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="margin-bottom: 0px !important; text-align: center !important; text-transform: uppercase !important; height: 21px !important; line-height: 21px !important; letter-spacing: 0.3px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Presidents swear an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution,” and that includes guarding against restrictions on political speech. So congratulations to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter for advancing that cause on the controversial issue of donor privacy.</font></div></div></div><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Treasury announced Monday evening that the Internal Revenue Service will no longer require most 501(c) organizations to include donor names and addresses on their tax Form 990 Schedule B. Nonprofits have had to divulge those sensitive details for donations above $5,000. From now on, only 501(c)(3)s that receive a tax deductible benefit will have to provide such donor information. This new IRS revenue procedure will exempt some 45,000 nonprofits from the reporting rule, including unions and social-welfare groups.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donor names are supposed to remain private, but the government has inadvertently revealed donor lists. IRS employees also used donor-information demands as part of their harassment of Tea Party organizations during the Obama Administration. State Attorneys General have even sought to require nonprofits to release Schedule B details to state regulators, with a goal of requiring public disclosure that could tee up donors for political harassment—a threat to free speech. The new IRS policy means states won’t be able to exploit this donor information as easily.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By contrast, Democrats condemned the decision as one that would only help the rich continue to remain unaccountable, with Sen. Jon Tester of Montana describing it as "the swampiest, darkest, dirtiest decision."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This doesn't mean that nonprofits are completely off the hook.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Organizations still need to keep the identities of donors on file, and the IRS has the power to request that information,</b>" Noti told Salon by email. "If there is reason to believe that an organization is illegally funneling foreign funds into U.S. elections, the Department of Justice or the Federal Election Commission could open an investigation."</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article182290861.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump’s inner circle expressed shock when Hillary Clinton failed to quickly condemn Democratic donor Harvey Weinstein after allegations of sexual assault. Now, the president’s team may find the shoe on the other foot as allegations land on a business partner of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin until June co-owned RatPac-Dune Entertainment, a film financing company that launched a partnership in 2013 with Warner Brothers to bankroll up to 75 films. Mnuchin himself was partnered with filmmaker Brett Ratner and Australian billionaire James Packer.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Los Angeles Times, six women are now accusing Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct amid a widening scandal sweeping Hollywood.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Actress Olivia Munn was among the six women, alleging Ratner in 2004 masturbated in front of her when, as a young aspiring actress, she went to deliver a meal to his trailer.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late Wednesday, Ratner issued a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-brett-ratner-warner-bros-20171101-story.html" target="blank" title="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">statement to the newspaper&nbsp;</a>saying he would voluntarily “step away from all Warner Bros.-related activities.” The studio has not made any formal comment on the widening scandal of the future of the film-financing deal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A person familiar with the deal, who demanded anonymity in order speak freely, said that although it runs through spring 2018, steps have been taken to get distance from Ratner. A recently expired first-look deal won’t be renewed, Ratner will no longer use a trailer on the studio lot and he won’t be part of a co-production deal with Amazon Studios on the film adaptation of the Donna Tartt novel “The Goldfinch'</font></p><div class="embed-media inline-video" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 25px; overflow: hidden; clear: both; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 15px 0px 4px; font-family: " mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" arial="Arial" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><div class="embed-media-details" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 18px 0px 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5;" /></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The explosive allegations against Ratner don’t mention his friend and business partner Mnuchin, who was a key part of the $450 million Warner Brothers deal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Treasury spokeswoman, in a statement to McClatchy late Wednesday, said Mnuchin had no knowledge of his partner’s alleged improprieties.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Ratner was an investor in RatPac-Dune Entertainment, and Secretary Mnuchin was the Managing Partner. Beyond having read allegations in the press, Secretary Mnuchin is unaware of any misconduct by Mr. Ratner,” said the statement.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ratner attorney Martin Singer did not return a request for comment but in media reports said his client “categorically” denied the allegations. Packer could not immediately be reached for comment.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After allegations were leveled against Weinstein, Trump’s closest advisors quickly leveraged the news into an attack on Clinton.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway criticized Clinton for waiting five days before condemning Weinstein, saying: “I felt like a woman who ran to be commander-in-chief and president of the United States, who talks about women’s empowerment, took an awfully long time to give support to these women.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted: “Weird, Hillary has been really quiet about Harvey Weinstein. You would think she would be all Over this. #WhatHappened?”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the Republican National Committee sought to tie multiple Democrats to Weinstein, issuing a chart, “Harvey’s Dirty Democratic Donations.'&nbsp; RatPac Entertainment was co-founded in 2012 by Ratner and Packer. Mnuchin had a financial film investment company called Dune Entertainment, and joined forced with them. When the three inked the finance deal with Warner Brothers CEO Kevin Tsujihara, one of their early successes was the blockbuster Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock. More recently the partnership funded the hit Wonder Woman.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Packer in April sold his share of RatPac-Dune Entertainment to Russian-American investor Len Blavatnik for an undisclosed sum.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When he took the Treasury post, Mnuchin promised to divest his stake in RatPac-Dune Entertainment within 120 days. But that promise was engulfed in controversy months later when he appointed as interim director of Dune Entertainment his then-fiancée Louise Linton. She was a Scottish model and actress whose film credits included Serial Daters Anonymous.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Appointed in May, Linton stepped down as interim president in June to avoid conflicts of interest after they married. Their planned nuptials were a well-kept secret until just days before they wed on June 24. Mnuchin’s divestiture of his stake in RatPac-Dune Entertainment became public on June 21, although he did not reveal who bought him out or at what price.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former Goldman Sachs executive, Mnuchin was a target for Democrats when nominated because of his “fire sale” purchase of the assets of failed bank Indy Mac amid the Great Recession. His bank later foreclosed on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article113866213.html" target="blank" title="" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">thousands of struggling California&nbsp;</a>homeowners.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin’s new bride was quickly introduced to the rough-and-tumble world of Washington politics when she drew unwanted headlines in August for using hashtags such as #tomfordsunnies and #hermesscarf along with photos she posted on her Instagram account. Critics accused her of lending her high-profile name to the clothing and accessories she regularly wore. Linton denied receiving any renumeration.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kevin G. Hall:&nbsp;<a href="tel:202-383-6038" title="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">202-383-6038</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/KevinGHall" target="blank" title="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">@KevinGHall</a>&nbsp;David Goldstein: 202-383-6125 @Goldsteindavidj</font></span></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians.</b>&nbsp;Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="">And consider Steve Mnuchin, Trump's campaign finance chairman</b>. Could he have known that the Trump Victory Fund, jointly managed by the Republican National Committe and Trump's campaign, took contributions from Intrater and Kukes?<b style="">&nbsp;Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which PAC officials are making the decisions to accept these donations?</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United,</b>&nbsp;and several subsequent decisions, allowed American corporations and citizens to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs and non-profit 501c4 organizations, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money. The only caveat is that PACs and non-profits cannot coordinate their activities with the political candidates they support.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie,&nbsp;</b>president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. In 1996, Bossie was hired by Republican Rep. Dan Burton to lead an investigation into President Bill Clinton's campaign fundraising. Burton fired him 18 months later for manipulating recordings of conversations among law officials and Webb Hubbell, a Clinton confidant who resigned as associate attorney general and pleaded guilty to tax fraud during the Whitewater investigation. CNN reported at the time that Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House, called Bossie's tampering with the Hubbell recordings an embarrassment to the Republicans.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is primarily funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC</span>.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert and Rebekah Mercer are major investors in Cambridge Analytica. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rebekah Mercer asked Cambridge chief executive Alexander Nix if the firm could compile stolen emails related to Hillary Clinton so that they could be more easily searched. (This suggestion came from someone she met at an event supporting Sen. Ted Cruz, according to The Hill. Cambridge Analytica had worked on digital marketing for Cruz before he dropped out of the Republican primary.)</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nix confirmed that he had asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to forward the Clinton-related emails. Assange said he declined the request.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rebekah Mercer also heads the non-profit Making America Great, formed in March 2017. The non-profit ran a seven-figure ad campaign highlighting Trump's achievements.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Bossie is the group's chief strategist.[russia in brezit w/ c anal?]</span></b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Erik Prince, brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contributed $150,000 to Mercer's Make America Number 1 PAC&nbsp;</b>and another $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund. Prince has recently testified to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about his trip to the remote Seychelles for a secret meeting in December 2016 with a close ally of Putin, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The purpose of the meeting was allegedly to setup a back channel of communication between then president-elect Donald Trump and the Russians, though Prince has denied this allegation. Before the 2015-16 elections, Prince's political contributions totaled a mere $31,800 as far back as 2007, according to FEC records</span>.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The hybrid super-PAC, The Committee to Defend the President, was formed in 2013 under the name Stop Hillary PAC. It is managed by<b>&nbsp;Dan Backer</b>, the lead attorney who won the McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission case in 2014. The Supreme Court decision eliminated the cap on how much wealthy individuals can donate to federal candidates, parties and PACs in a single, two-year election cycle.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Bossie, Dan Backer helped to open the floodgates to millions of dollars of influence brought to bear on incumbents and their political challengers who are now pressured to kowtow to their donors with the biggest bank accounts, even if their billions are earned in Russian rubles.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Backer was born in Russia and emigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1978.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The changes to our campaign finance laws created an avenue for Russia to try to influence our elections. There are holes in our firewall and they aren't on the internet.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Cyprus</b>&nbsp;is at the center of a circle of corruption surrounding Trump</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Touch chart to see info:</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ruthcmay</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steve-mnuchin-heckled-ucla-students">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steve-mnuchin-heckled-ucla-students</a></font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin isn't accustomed to facing direct challenges to his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/30/whistleblower-mnuchins-touted-analysis-claiming-tax-cuts-rich-pay-themselves-doesnt" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wild economic claims</a>&nbsp;or protests over the GOP tax plan he helped craft, and after experiencing both during an event at UCLA's Burkle Center on Monday, Mnuchin demanded that video of his appearance be suppressed.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mnuchin-dogged-by-protesters-doesnt-want-video-posted-1519849427" style="text-decoration-line: none;">According to</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em>Wall Street Journal</em>, Mnuchin complained to the audience that he usually only talks to "people who wanna listen to me speak" after students yelled out "I think you're full of shit" and denounced the Republican tax bill as an attack on "<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/watch-steve-mnuchin-begged-ucla-not-share-video-college-students-telling-hes-full-sht/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">people who are in poverty</a>."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After noting that it was his first time speaking at a university, an increasingly "agitated" Mnuchin "stopped the conversation several times, asking the hecklers either to identify themselves or explain what they were protesting," the&nbsp;<em>Journal&nbsp;</em>reported on Wednesday.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UCLA initially planned to post a full video of the event to its website later this week, but a university spokeswoman told the&nbsp;<em>Journal</em>&nbsp;that Mnuchin "retracted his permission for the Burkle Center to post its video and podcast of yesterday’s event on its website."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But thanks to students and reporters who were in attendance, a few short videos of the event ultimately emerged on social media.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Steve Mnuchin being called on his plutocratic BS at UCLA," student Jacob Woocher&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jacobwooch/status/968291251006013440" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wrote on Twitter</a>, attaching a short video of a protester yelling at Mnuchin for working to take Americans' healthcare. "Enemy of the people! Foreclosed on 36,000 people and helped pass the biggest corporate tax cut in history."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch:</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nomi prins 12/17 AN</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one">https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...O<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">n the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-job-growth-picks-up-flat-wages-raise-consumer-spending-worries-idUSKBN1D308L" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">median wage</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;rose just 2.4 percent and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, its lowest level in nearly four decades—particularly difficult for new entrants to the workforce, such as students graduating under a $1.3 trillion pile of unrepayable or very challenging&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-bubble-investment-is-private-abs-goldman-2017-12" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">student loan debt</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. (Not to worry though: Goldman Sachs is on that, promoting a way to profit from this debt by stuffing it into other assets and selling those off to investors, a la shades of the subprime mortgage crisis.)</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those of us living in the actual world without billionaire family pedigrees possess a healthy dose of skepticism over the “Make America Great Again” sect that believes Trump has transformed America “hugely,” for record-setting markets don’t imply economic stability, nor do 40 percent corporate tax cuts translate into 40 percent wage growth. We can march forward into 2018 carrying that knowledge with us.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But first, a recap. For the U.S. financial system, 2017 was marked by five main themes: The GOP’s “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” Corporate Tax Reduction Plan; Big Banks Still Bad; The Fed’s Minor Policy Shift; Debt; and Deregulators Appointed to Positions of Regulatory Authority.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Banks Are Still Big and Bad</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Big Six banks have paid billions of dollars in settlements for a variety of frauds committed before and since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but that didn’t keep them from tallying up new fines in 2017</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, agreed to&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.corp-research.org/jpmorganchase" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">pay $53 million in fines</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;for scamming African-American and Latino mortgage borrowers with disproportionately higher rates than for white borrowers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">fined Citigroup $28.8 million</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;for not disclosing foreclosure-avoiding actions. Bank of America&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/03/28/judge-fines-bank-america-45-million-for-heartless-treatment-mortgage-borrowers.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">got fined $45 million</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;for its foul treatment of a California couple trying to save their home.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Big Six bank that received the most attention in 2017, as it did in 2016, was&nbsp;<a href="https://financialadvisoriq.com/search/search/advanced?referrer_module=companyTag&q=%22Wells+Fargo%22" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Wells Fargo</a>. The number of people affected by its fake-account creation scandal grew from 2 million reported in 2016 to about 3.5 million. That increase resulted in Wells Fargo expanding its associated&nbsp;<a href="https://financialadvisoriq.com/c/1824523/211663" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">class-action settlement</a>&nbsp;to $142 million.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wells Fargo was mired in smaller scandals, too. For instance, it charged 800,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need, raised mortgage rates for certain customers without properly disclosing it was going to, and made a bunch of unauthorized adjustments to people’s mortgages.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 featured in both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees’ platforms during the campaign season. But Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made it clear multiple times there would be no such push from the administration, arguing against doing so before senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight<b style="">, Mnuchin </b>also pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescind American International Group’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-bc-us--aig-systemic-risk-20170929-story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">paying penance for its role</a>&nbsp;at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 featured in both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees’ platforms during the campaign season. But Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made it clear multiple times there would be no such push from the administration, arguing against doing so before senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight, Mnuchin also pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescind<b>American International Group</b>’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-bc-us--aig-systemic-risk-20170929-story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">paying penance for its role</a>&nbsp;at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a major blow to citizen security, Richard Cordray, the Obama-appointed regulator,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/11/15/richard-cordray-is-stepping-down-as-head-of-consumer-financial-protection-bureau/?utm_term=.e0a7758f5b64" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">resigned as director</a>&nbsp;of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Bashing</strong></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">During his six years at the helm of the CFPB, which the Dodd-Frank Act formed in 2011, the 1,600-person regulatory entity&nbsp;<a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">accomplished a lot</a>. It has provided $11.9 billion in relief to consumers for enforcement actions affecting more than 29.1 million people, handled 1.2 million consumer complaints and garnered timely responses on concerns for 97 percent of consumers.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Still, Trump appointed White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to the post that Cordray vacated.&nbsp;</b>Remember: Mulvaney as a congressman&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-names-mulvaney-to-cfpb-wants-to-tear-agency-apart-2017-11" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">wasn’t a fan of protecting consumers</a>. “I don’t like the fact that [the] CFPB exists,” he said. “I will be perfectly honest with you.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Over at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Joseph Otting, Mnuchin’s former partner in the takeover of IndyMac and subsequent flurry of foreclosures, was confirmed to the top position.</b>&nbsp;In that spot, Otting will be able to help the Trump administration dial back more post-crisis bank regulations.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nomi prins&nbsp; ddjt opens llc in campaign and as pres, eg indonesia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/">
</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/">https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">I mean, in your wildest dreams could you make this stuff up? And worse yet, in the maelstrom of claims, tweets, wild statements, strange bits of information, and god knows what else, it would be so easy for what truly matters in our world to get lost in the shuffle.&nbsp; For instance, amid all Donald Trump’s bluster and tweets, it’s not hard to forget who he really is: our first elected billionaire president. (Nelson Rockefeller undoubtedly came closest, historically speaking, but he was only vice president and was in any case appointed, not elected.) Trump should be seen as the living, breathing result of an inequality gap that first began to widen almost four decades ago in the era of President Ronald Reagan and reached</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/us-inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2017-6" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">cataclysmic proportions</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">in this century. It was, of course, the Supreme Court which, in 2010, released all the money that has flowed so steadily upwards into the political system big time with its</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v.FEC" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none"><em>Citizens United</em></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">decision and so paved the way for the truly wealthy to organize and fund a genuine</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175478/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,the_1%25_election/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">1% politics</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial">in which a billionaire could finally become the people’s candidate.</span></font></div><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s easy in the chaos of the moment -- every moment these days -- to forget that Donald Trump appointed the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38168382" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wealthiest cabinet</a>&nbsp;in our history by a country mile and so prepared the way for the further promotion of a system in which the benefits of... well, you name it... will flow ever upwards ever more rapidly. Amid all the chaos and “fake news” of our moment, something profound is happening and, under the circumstances, it’s easy enough to ignore.&nbsp; However chaotically, we’re witnessing the creation of a new American system of injustice, a true government of the plutocrats. Fortunately, we still have&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176330/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><em>TomDispatch</em>&nbsp;regular</a>&nbsp;Nomi Prins, author of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568584792/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><em>All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power</em></a>, to remind us of this reality, as today when she focuses on Secretary of the Wealthy... oops, I mean Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.&nbsp;<em>Tom</em></font></p><blockquote style="padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 21px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="margin: 11px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Steven Mnuchin, Foreclosure King of America</strong>&nbsp;
<strong>Secretary of the Treasury for the .01%</strong>&nbsp;
By&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nomiprins" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Nomi Prins</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doesn’t exactly come across as the guy you’d want in your corner in a playground tussle. In the Trump administration, he’s been more like the kid trying to cop favor with the school bully. That, at least, is the role he seems to have taken in the Trump White House. When he isn’t circling the Sunday shows stooging for the president, he regularly plays the willing fall guy for tax policies guaranteed to&nbsp;<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/352126-mnuchin-on-if-there-will-be-no-absolute-tax-cut-for-upper-class-it-was-never-a" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">stoke further inequality</a>&nbsp;in America and for legislation that will&nbsp;<a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-treasury-arbitration-20171023-story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">remove</a>&nbsp;just about any consumer protections against Wall Street.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner, arrived in Washington with a distinct reputation.&nbsp; Back in 2009, he had corralled a bundle of rich financiers to take over California’s IndyMac bank, shut down amid the 2008 foreclosure crisis by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).&nbsp; Bought for $<a href="https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09001a.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">13.9 billion</a>&nbsp;(but only&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09001a.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$1.3 billion</a>&nbsp;in actual cash), Mnuchin turned it into a genuine foreclosure machine, in the process sealing his own fate when it came to his future reputation. At the time, he didn’t appear concerned about public approval. Something far more valuable was at stake: the $200 million that,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/trump-treasury-contender-mnuchin-found-profits-in-mortgage-mess" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to</a>&nbsp;Bloomberg News, he raked in personally, thanks to the deal.</font></p></blockquote><a name="more" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /></font></a><blockquote style="padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 21px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a name="more" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /></font><p style="margin: 11px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><a name="more" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a name="more" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">No such luck, of course, for the bank’s ordinary borrowers. During Mnuchin’s reign, IndyMac carried out more than&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/trump-treasury-contender-mnuchin-found-profits-in-mortgage-mess" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">36,000</a>&nbsp;foreclosures, tossing former homeowners (including active&nbsp;<a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/19/510628736/trump-treasury-nominee-defends-role-in-foreclosure-crisis" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">duty military</a>&nbsp;servicemen and women) onto the street without hesitation or pity by any means necessary. According to a memo obtained by investigative reporter&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">David Dayen</a>, OneWest, the new name that Mnuchin and his&nbsp;<a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/11/29/503755613/trumps-potential-treasury-secretary-headed-a-foreclosure-machine" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">billionaire posse</a>&nbsp;coined for Indybank, of which Mnuchin was now&nbsp;<a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/11/29/503755613/trumps-potential-treasury-secretary-h" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CEO</a>&nbsp;and chairman, “rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, Mnuchin&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchins-onewest-bank-has-long-record-of-mortgage-foreclosures-2017-8" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">remains bitter</a>&nbsp;and frustrated that he can’t kick the reputation he got in those days.&nbsp; As he told a House Financial Services Committee Congressional hearing this July, "I take great offense to anybody who calls me the foreclosure king." &nbsp;Such indignation would ring truer if, in May, one of Mnuchin’s banking units, a company called Financial Freedom, hadn’t&nbsp;<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/16/news/mnuchin-financial-freedom-settlement/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">agreed to pay</a>&nbsp;a more than $89 million settlement to the government for taking unreasonable advantage of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-treasury-pick-excelled-at-kicking-elderly-out-of-their-homes" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">thousands</a>&nbsp;of seniors<strong>&nbsp;</strong>through&nbsp;<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/university/finances-actual-retirement/reverse-mortgages-other-home-loan.asp#ixzz4wfLlnDCY" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reverse mortgages</a>&nbsp;which convert equity in a home into a loan. (A few months later, in August, a watchdog group,&nbsp;<a href="https://campaignforaccountability.org/mnuchin-false-statements-to-congress/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Campaign for Accountability</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/08/02/treasury-secretary-steve-mnuchin-allegedly-lied-under-oath-will-the-justice-department-investigate/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">called upon</a>&nbsp;the Justice Department to investigate Mnuchin for allegedly making false statements under oath to Congress about his actions at OneWest between 2009 and 2015.)</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Donald Trump, Mnuchin is a man intent on making the rich richer and to hell with everyone else. Continually channeling Trump’s ego, whatever his smoldering resentments may be, he soldiers on -- and in the context of the Trump White House successfully indeed. After all, this administration has&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/who-has-trump-fired-so-far-james-comey-sean-spicer-michael-flynn-2017-7" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lost 14&nbsp;</a>key people in less than a year, including an FBI director, a national security adviser, a White House chief of staff, and a White House communications director. Through it all, Mnuchin has remained in place, one of the relatively few members of The Donald’s original team not related by blood or marriage who is seemingly thriving. (Admittedly, he and the president were linked in what CNN once called a “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/05/politics/donald-trump-steven-mnuchin-finance-chair/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">business capacity</a>” even before he became Trump’s campaign finance director in May 2016.) &nbsp;</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamilton, Trump, and a Playbill for the Economy</font></strong></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></strong></font></font></p></blockquote><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176348/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_you%2C_sir%2C_are_no_alexander_hamilton">http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176348/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_you%2C_sir%2C_are_no_alexander_hamilton</a></font></span></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref RU solani</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/">
</a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/">https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/</a>&nbsp;JP morgan sold bad morts, but said did not when make $, deneid when cost $, then forgave loans that led to zombie foreclosure sometimes years after.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/">https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/</a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steven-mnuchin-famous-throwing-tens-thousands-americans-streets-housing">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steven-mnuchin-famous-throwing-tens-thousands-americans-streets-housing</a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">reasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doesn’t exactly come across as the guy you’d want in your corner in a playground tussle. In the Trump administration, he’s been more like the kid trying to cop favor with the school bully. That, at least, is the role he seems to have taken in the Trump White House. When he isn’t circling the Sunday shows stooging for the president, he regularly plays the willing fall guy for tax policies guaranteed to&nbsp;</span><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/finance/352126-mnuchin-on-if-there-will-be-no-absolute-tax-cut-for-upper-class-it-was-never-a" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">stoke further inequality</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;in America and for legislation that will&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-treasury-arbitration-20171023-story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">remove</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;just about any consumer protections against Wall Street.</span></font></font></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner, arrived in Washington with a distinct reputation.&nbsp; Back in 2009, he had corralled a bundle of rich financiers to take over California’s IndyMac bank, shut down amid the 2008 foreclosure crisis by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).&nbsp; Bought for $<a href="https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09001a.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">13.9 billion</a>&nbsp;(but only&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09001a.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$1.3 billion</a>&nbsp;in actual cash), Mnuchin turned it into a genuine foreclosure machine, in the process sealing his own fate when it came to his future reputation. At the time, he didn’t appear concerned about public approval. Something far more valuable was at stake: the $200 million that,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/trump-treasury-contender-mnuchin-found-profits-in-mortgage-mess" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to</a>&nbsp;Bloomberg News, he raked in personally, thanks to the deal.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No such luck, of course, for the bank’s ordinary borrowers. During Mnuchin’s reign, IndyMac carried out more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/trump-treasury-contender-mnuchin-found-profits-in-mortgage-mess" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">36,000</a>&nbsp;foreclosures, tossing former homeowners (including active&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/01/19/510628736/trump-treasury-nominee-defends-role-in-foreclosure-crisis" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">duty military</a>&nbsp;servicemen and women) onto the street without hesitation or pity by any means necessary. According to a memo obtained by investigative reporter&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">David Dayen</a>, OneWest, the new name that Mnuchin and his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/11/29/503755613/trumps-potential-treasury-secretary-headed-a-foreclosure-machine" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">billionaire posse</a>&nbsp;coined for Indybank, of which Mnuchin was now&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/11/29/503755613/trumps-potential-treasury-secretary-h" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CEO</a>&nbsp;and chairman, “rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, Mnuchin&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchins-onewest-bank-has-long-record-of-mortgage-foreclosures-2017-8" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">remains bitter</a>&nbsp;and frustrated that he can’t kick the reputation he got in those days.&nbsp; As he told a House Financial Services Committee Congressional hearing this July, "I take great offense to anybody who calls me the foreclosure king." &nbsp;Such indignation would ring truer if, in May, one of Mnuchin’s banking units, a company called Financial Freedom, hadn’t&nbsp;<a href="https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/16/news/mnuchin-financial-freedom-settlement/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">agreed to pay</a>&nbsp;a more than $89 million settlement to the government for taking unreasonable advantage of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-treasury-pick-excelled-at-kicking-elderly-out-of-their-homes" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">thousands</a>&nbsp;of seniors<strong style="">&nbsp;</strong>through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/university/finances-actual-retirement/reverse-mortgages-other-home-loan.asp#ixzz4wfLlnDCY" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reverse mortgages</a>&nbsp;which convert equity in a home into a loan. (A few months later, in August, a watchdog group,&nbsp;<a href="https://campaignforaccountability.org/mnuchin-false-statements-to-congress/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Campaign for Accountability</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/08/02/treasury-secretary-steve-mnuchin-allegedly-lied-under-oath-will-the-justice-department-investigate/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">called upon</a>&nbsp;the Justice Department to investigate Mnuchin for allegedly making false statements under oath to Congress about his actions at OneWest between 2009 and 2015.)</font></span></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Donald Trump, Mnuchin is a man intent on making the rich richer and to hell with everyone else. Continually channeling Trump’s ego, whatever his smoldering resentments may be, he soldiers on -- and in the context of the Trump White House successfully indeed. After all, this administration has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-has-trump-fired-so-far-james-comey-sean-spicer-michael-flynn-2017-7" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lost 14&nbsp;</a>key people in less than a year, including an FBI director, a national security adviser, a White House chief of staff, and a White House communications director. Through it all, Mnuchin has remained in place, one of the relatively few members of The Donald’s original team not related by blood or marriage who is seemingly thriving. (Admittedly, he and the president were linked in what CNN once called a “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/05/politics/donald-trump-steven-mnuchin-finance-chair/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">business capacity</a>” even before he became Trump’s campaign finance director in May 2016.) &nbsp;</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamilton, Trump, and a Playbill for the Economy</font></strong></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></b></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coming from a Goldman Sachs alum, that should have rung a few bells. After all, in the fall of 2008, with the stock market tanking and banks imploding, then-Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson took a similar position with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Following that chamber’s initial rejection of a $700 billion bank bailout bill that sent the markets into a tailspin, he warned that, if she didn’t get it through, the big banks would stop providing money to the American public.&nbsp; Sure enough, Congress complied. With 91 Republicans joining 172 Democrats, the bill passed by a vote of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/business/economy/04bailout.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">263 to 171</a>.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nine years and a plethora of big bank subsidies later, Mnuchin conflated market levels with legislation in a similarly threatening manner. As he told&nbsp;<em>Politico</em>, “There is no question that the rally in the stock market has baked into it reasonably high expectations of us getting tax cuts and tax reform done." He then added, "To the extent we get the tax deal done, the stock market will go up higher." But with that, of course, went a warning: “There’s no question in my mind that if we don’t get it done you’re going to see a reversal of a significant amount of these gains.”&nbsp;</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And speaking of reversals, the “Mnuchin Rule,” as it was dubbed in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4655518/wyden-mnuchin-rule" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">January, 2017</a>, underscored the then-prevailing Trump administration position that the wealthy should not be afforded tax cuts. By October, however, Mnuchin had changed his rule. "When you're cutting taxes across the board,” he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/mnuchin-tax-bill-markets-tank-243890" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">explained</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<em>Politico</em>, “it's very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy with tax cuts to the middle class. The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do.”&nbsp;</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Actually, the math isn’t hard to do at all. My eight-year-old niece could do it.&nbsp; If you make more than a certain amount, your tax rates shouldn’t get cut. That’s the only math that makes sense. But in the land of tax subterfuge, even if you leave a top tax bracket rate as it is, you can still ensure that the wealthy get all the breaks in other ways.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On November 2nd, the Republicans finally released their “<a href="https://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bill_text.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Tax Cuts and Job Act</a>,” which contained new blows to middle-class wellbeing, including the elimination of deductions for medical expenses, student loan interest, and state and local taxes. For corporations, already flush with cash,&nbsp;the plan calls for a significant, not to say staggering, tax break.&nbsp; Their tax rate would be slashed from 35% to 20%.&nbsp;</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And don’t forget repealing the estate tax, that other classic benefit for “the masses.” Count on one thing: there will be no reversals from Mnuchin or Trump on that because the math couldn’t be clearer.&nbsp; Only the hyper-wealthy have estates big enough to reap rewards from such a change. At an Institute for International Finance conference, even Mnuchin had to agree that this was a benefit of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich: “Obviously, the estate tax, I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people.” Indeed, the heirs to the estates of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-many-people-pay-estate-tax" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">fewer than</a>&nbsp;1 in 500 Americans who die each year would benefit in any way from such a repeal, though the children or other relatives of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/02/this-mammoth-tax-cut-could-save-trumps-wealthy-cabinet-1-5-billion/?utm_term=.1ed7240be9f1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">13</a>&nbsp;of the 24 members of Donald Trump’s cabinet and the president himself would&nbsp;<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/mnuchin-cutting-taxes-for-the-wealthy-is-hard-a56f78b0ecea/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">bag</a>a collective estate tax break of about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/02/this-mammoth-tax-cut-could-save-trumps-wealthy-cabinet-1-5-billion/?utm_term=.40c8d6fd2c54" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$1.5 billion</a>.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, don’t think that everything’s coming up roses for our latest secretary of the Treasury.&nbsp; Wall Street may now be king in Washington, but Mnuchin is not (though he is clearly a prince to the one man who truly matters right now, Donald Trump). In his efforts to promote the Trump vision (whatever that might be), the Treasury secretary seems to be coming up distinctly short, even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-set-to-vote-today-on-harvey-aid-package-that-would-also-raise-debt-ceiling/2017/09/08/728ddce8-9494-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html?utm_term=.6333a936a51e" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">with Republicans</a>&nbsp;in Congress who have described his approach to lawmaking in terms ranging from “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/08/politics/steven-mnuchin-house-republican-meeting/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">uncomfortable</a>” to “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-08/mnuchin-ripped-by-house-gop-on-sales-job-for-debt-limit-deal" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">intellectually insulting</a>.”</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump, of course, campaigned as an anti-establishment candidate who would offer a hand to regular people, drain the Washington swamp, and have our backs. Then he promptly began filling his administration, especially when it came to the economy, with the richest of the rich, figures guaranteed to promote the dismantling of whatever tepid regulations remained to protect citizens from economic disaster while enriching the usual .01%.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin has yet to even do something as simple and seemingly straightforward as posting a full-scale explanation of the tax plan he’s plugging so hard at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Treasury Department’s web page</a>. Even though until November 2nd it remained a chimera, that hasn’t stopped him from rushing to its defense -- the defense that is, of giving the extremely wealthy yet more of their money back. Welcome to the twenty-first-century American politics<strong>&nbsp;</strong>of the .01%.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Mnuchin has noted that he’s a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mnuchin-plane-20171006-story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">big fan</a>&nbsp;of biographies, though his schedule doesn’t allow much time for “<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/mnuchin-tax-bill-markets-tank-243890" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pleasure reading</a>.” When asked about Alexander Hamilton, he said, “I have a beautiful painting of him in my office. He stares at me every day and I look at him for great advice.”</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Hamilton understood that, without adequate taxation, you couldn't run a country, or pay its debts, a stance that informed how he implemented federal taxes in the new nation. As he&nbsp;<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-25-02-0197" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">said</a>&nbsp;in 1801, “As to taxes, they are evidently inseparable from government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.” He also believed that those with more money should pay more taxes. His excise tax plan, for example, required the taxation of luxury items, bastions of the rich.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This government has, in fact, received&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/mthTreasStmt/mts0817.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">more than $2.96 trillion</a>&nbsp;in total tax revenues so far in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2017. That figure comes with a budget deficit of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$673.7 billion</a>, which means that if the rich or corporations were to cease to pay various taxes (at least at present rates), money would still have to come from somewhere. To begin to make up for the shortfall, the less wealthy will simply have to pay more in some fashion, as will states and cities, and cuts in social spending will undoubtedly follow as night does day.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The High-Flying Treasury Secretary Covers Trump’s Back</font></strong></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin himself knows a situation ripe for the picking when he sees it, in government or out.&nbsp; Take, for instance, his prodigious use of military planes for his personal travel, both on government business and for pleasure.&nbsp; These flights have pushed the boundaries of judgement, if not legality. &nbsp;According to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-structure/ig/Documents/Treasury%20OIG%20Travel%20Inquiry%20Memo.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">report</a>&nbsp;from Rich Delmar, the counsel to the Treasury Department’s inspector general, Mnuchin took military aircraft on at least seven occasions without obtaining appropriate authorization, skirting a "rigorous" preapproval process established to avoid undue use of such expensive amenities.&nbsp; And though he withdrew a request to take his wife on their honeymoon to Europe last summer by military aircraft, he did&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/treasury-inspector-general-to-review-mnuchin-flight-to-ft-knox/2017/08/31/d9e122d4-8eb2-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html?utm_term=.a6706ee0568c" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">use</a>&nbsp;an Air Force jet to fly to Kentucky with her to watch the solar eclipse and -- he carefully added -- to “<a href="https://twitter.com/stevenmnuchin1/status/899727624594903040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fnews%2F2017-08-21%2Fmnuchin-visits-fort-knox-says-gold-safe" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">review the gold</a>” at Fort Knox. Unlike Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price whose government aircraft fetish cost him his job, Fort Knox covered the solar eclipse for Mnuchin.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He classified each of those trips as a “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-pol-essential-washington-updates-inspector-general-says-white-house-1507237693-htmlstory.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">White House support mission</a>,” which sounds dramatic and is a category technically reserved for situations in which commercial flights aren’t available or there is a national security or other emergency. I checked, however.&nbsp; There are several $200 economy flights from Washington to Kentucky, which more than beats the $10,000 per hour the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-22/mnuchin-s-wife-paying-own-way-on-treasury-trips-official-says" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Pentagon</a>&nbsp;charges as its official aircraft expense when its planes are used in this way.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to those flights, Mnuchin has been flying high as a kind of second&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellyanne_Conway" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Kellyanne Conway</a>&nbsp;on all sorts of non-Treasury-related topics that threaten to eclipse his boss. With Trump embroiled in a bitter war of words with National Football League players&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176237/tomgram%3A_robert_lipsyte%2C_donald_trump%2C_colin_kaepernick%2C_and_me_on_super_bowl_sunday/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">taking a knee</a>&nbsp;over racism, Mnuchin saw an opportunity and&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/352118-mnuchin-nfl-players-can-do-free-speech-on-their-own-time" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">cruised</a>&nbsp;the Sunday&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/24/nfl-players-mnuchin-trump-free-speech-243065" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">talk-show circuit</a>&nbsp;attacking the players. He used his platform to insist that they should "do free speech on their own time” -- “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/24/politics/steve-mnuchin-nfl-sotu-cnntv/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">off the field</a>,” not on it.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About a week later, he responded to the flak over the president’s lackluster support for Puerto Rican recovery after Hurricane Maria devastated that island. Defending his boss and his tweets in another circuit of those talk shows, he doubled down on White House criticisms of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz.&nbsp; “When the president gets attacked, he attacks back,” he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/steven-mnuchin-defends-trumps-feud-with-san-juan-mayor-when-the-president-gets-attacked-he-attacks-back/article/2636213" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">told</a>&nbsp;Chuck Todd on NBC’s&nbsp;<em>Meet the Press</em>, adding, "I think the mayor's comments were unfair given what the government has done."</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the head of the Treasury isn’t an elected official, his words do hold considerable weight -- and he is, after all, fifth in the line of succession for the presidency. The value, insights, and credibility of the Treasury Department impact economies, markets, investors, and confidence the world over.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Simply Swampy</font></strong></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Call it lying, misleading, flip-flopping, or the invocation of the “rights” of privilege, but Mnuchin has already amassed quite a catalogue of questionable statements in his brief career in public office and, while he’s been at it, he’s even made&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2017/08/07/steve-mnuchin-15-million-conflict-of-interest-rules/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">extra money</a>&nbsp;along the way: at least $15 million and possibly as much as $53 million, reports&nbsp;<em>Fortune</em>, from “entertainment and real estate interests that he sold to comply with federal conflict of interest rules.”</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For him, as for his boss, whatever anyone says, the bottom line and their allegiance remains simple and clear: it’s not to the middle class; it’s to their class, the half-billion and up folks.&nbsp;</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Hamilton was no stranger to wealth either, but he understood that the nation’s wealth should be shared more evenly.&nbsp; He attempted to use his office as a national unifier and a place to coordinate efforts to pay off debts from the Revolutionary War. Mnuchin’s doctrine is one of returning to a world of fewer rules for Wall Street and fewer taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which, in translation, means greater risks and costs for the rest of us and for the country as a whole. While President Trump isn’t exactly the cannot-tell-a-lie inheritor of the Washingtonian tradition, his Treasury Secretary, the foreclosure king of America, is distinctly no Alexander Hamilton.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></font></font></p><div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_news-politics" style="width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio" style=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nomi Prins</font></font></font></p></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/01/05/what-are-steve-mnuchin-and-jeff-sessions-hiding-trumps-cabinet-appointees-have-huge-gaps-in-their-records/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.salon.com/2017/01/05/what-are-steve-mnuchin-and-jeff-sessions-hiding-trumps-cabinet-appointees-have-huge-gaps-in-their-records/</a></font></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span style="" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" margin="margin" padding="padding" border="border" outline="outline" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background="background" transparent="transparent" list-style="list-style" none="none">There are plenty of reasons for Mnuchin to not want to draw attention to this part of his record. His future boss Donald Trump used Goldman Sachs as a cudgel to beat Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign over paid speeches she gave to groups at the bank. The firm is also associated with the reckless gambles and greed that caused the Great Recession, and the name alone can cause the public to&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/spitting.html" target="blank" style="font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" margin="margin" padding="padding" border="border" outline="outline" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background="background" transparent="transparent" list-style="list-style" none="none" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration="text-decoration">spit like a Jewish grandmother</a><span style="" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" margin="margin" padding="padding" border="border" outline="outline" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background="background" transparent="transparent" list-style="list-style" none="none">&nbsp;at the mention of it.</span></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none;">And&nbsp;OneWest stands accused of a vast ocean of&nbsp;</span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration: none;">unethical and downright inhumane behavior</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none;">&nbsp;during the foreclosure crisis of a few years ago. This includes an infamous incident when the bank&nbsp;foreclosed on the home of a 90-year-old woman who&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-treasury-foreclosed-homes-mnuchin-232038" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration: none;">accidentally shorted</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none;">&nbsp;one mortgage payment by 27 cents.</span></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this would be embarrassing for a president who is still claiming to be a populist wanting to “drain the swamp” and lift up the American people — at least, if Donald Trump were capable of feeling shame. But Trump won’t be the one in the hearing room, and this history, particularly the part at&nbsp;OneWest, could make for a very difficult grilling for Mnuchin, assuming Senate Democrats are willing to put up a fig...</font></span></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/trumps-treasury-pick-excelled-kicking-elderly-people-out-their-homes">http://www.alternet.org/economy/trumps-treasury-pick-excelled-kicking-elderly-people-out-their-homes</a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, OneWest Bank moved to foreclose on John Yang, an 80-year-old Korean immigrant living in Orange Park, Florida, a small suburb of Jacksonville. The bank believed he wasn't living in his home, violating the terms of its loan. It dispatched an agent to give him legal notification of the<b> foreclosure.</b></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where did the bank&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/3238626-OneWest-Yang-Proof-of-Service.html" style="text-decoration: none;">find him</a>? At the same single-story home the bank had said in court papers he did not occupy.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still OneWest pressed on, forcing Yang, a former Christian missionary, to seek help from legal aid attorneys. This year, during a deposition, an employee of <b>OneWest's</b> servicing division was asked the obvious question: Why would the bank pursue a foreclosure that seemed so clearly unjustified by the facts?</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The employee's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/3246576-Page-from-Reverse-Mortgage-Foreclosure-Depo.html" style="text-decoration: none;">response was blunt</a>: "You're trying to make logic out of an illogical situation."</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yang was lucky. The bank eventually dropped its efforts against him. But others were not so fortunate. In recent years, OneWest has foreclosed on at least 50,000 people, often in circumstances that consumer advocates say run counter to federal rules and, as in Yang's case, common sense.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary has prompted new scrutiny of OneWest's foreclosure practices. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mnuchin was the lead investor and chairman of the company during the years it ramped up its foreclosure efforts. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Representatives from the company and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.</span></b></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Records show the attempt to push Mr. Yang out of his home was </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">not an unusual one for OneWest's </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Financial Freedom unit,</span> </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">which focused on controversial home loans known as reverse mortgages. Regulators and consumer advocates have long worried that these loans, popular during the height of the housing bubble, exploit elderly homeowners.</span></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The loans allow people to benefit from the equity they have built up over many years without selling their houses. The money is paid in a variety of ways, from lump sums to a stream of monthly checks. Borrowers are allowed to stay in their homes for as long as they live.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The loans are guaranteed by the U.S. Department of<b> Housing and Urban Development</b>, meaning the agency pays lenders like Freedom Financial the difference between the ultimate sale price of the home and the size of the reverse mortgage.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the fees are often high and the interest charges mount up quickly because the homeowner isn't paying down any of the principal on the loan. Homeowners remain on the hook for property taxes and insurance and can lose their homes if they miss those payments.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A 2012 report to Congress by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that "vigorous enforcement is necessary to ensure that older homeowners are not&nbsp;<a href="http://files.consumerfinance.gov/a/assets/documents/201206_cfpb_Reverse_Mortgage_Report.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">defrauded of a lifetime of home equity."</a></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ProPublica</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> found numerous examples where Financial Freedom had foreclosed for legally questionable reasons. The company served several other homeowners at their homes to let them know they were being sued for not occupying their homes.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In Florida,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-treasury-foreclosed-homes-mnuchin-232038" style="text-decoration: none;">a shortfall of only $0.27</a>&nbsp;led to a foreclosure attempt. I</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">n Atlanta, the company sought to foreclose on a widow after her husband's death, but backed down when a legal aid attorney sued, citing federal law that allowed the surviving spouse to remain in the home.</span></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It appears their business approach is scorched earth, in a way that doesn't serve communities, homeowners or the taxpayer," said Alys Cohen, a staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center in Washington D.C.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Since the financial crisis, OneWest, through Financial Freedom,</b> has conducted a disproportionate number of the nation's reverse mortgage foreclosures. It was responsible for 16,200 foreclosures on<b> government-backed reverse mortgages</b>, or&nbsp;<a href="http://calreinvest.org/system/resources/W1siZiIsIjIwMTYvMDQvMjcvMTdfNDFfMjdfNzY3X0NSQ19GYWN0X1NoZWV0X2Fib3V0X0ZpbmFuY2lhbF9GcmVlZG9tX0ZvcmVjbG9zdXJlc19TaW5jZV9BcHJpbF8yMDA5LnBkZiJdXQ/CRC%2520Fact%2520Sheet%2520about%2520Financial%2520Freedom%2520Foreclosures%2520Since%2520April%25202009.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">39 percent of all foreclosures</a>&nbsp;nationwide, from 2009 through late 2014, even though it only serviced about 17 percent of the loans, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">according to government data analyzed by the California Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group for low-income consumers. While some foreclosures were justified, legal aid attorneys say<b> Financial Freedom has refused to work with borrowers in foreclosure to establish payment plans, in contrast with other servicers of reverse mortgages.</b></span></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Experts say the companies are not entirely to blame for the wave of foreclosures. HUD oversees standards on most reverse mortgages. In the years after the housing crash, HUD's rules evolved, creating a miasma of confusion for mortgage servicers. Companies say the new federal rules required them to foreclose when borrowers fell far behind on property and insurance costs, rather than work out payment plans.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">OneWest's rough treatment of homeowners extended to its behavior toward borrowers with standard mortgages in the aftermath of the housing crash. In 2009, the Obama administration&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-documents-show-weak-oversight-of-key-foreclosure-program" style="text-decoration: none;">launched a program</a>&nbsp;to encourage mortgage servicers to work out affordable mortgage modifications with borrowers. OneWest, weighed down by several hundred thousand souring mortgages, signed up.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It didn't go well</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. About three-quarters of homeowners who sought a modification from OneWest through the program were denied, according to the latest figures from the Treasury Department.<b> OneWest was among the worst performing large servicers in the program by that measure. In 2011, activists protested OneWest's indifference at Mnuchin's Bel Air mansion in Los Angeles.</b></span></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're in a difficult economic environment and very sympathetic to the problems many homeowners face, but under the government's program there's not a solution in every case," Mnuchin told the Wall Street Journal in that year.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Despite the controversy, Mnuchin and the other investors in OneWest&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/steven-mnuchins-defining-moment-seizing-opportunity-from-the-financial-crisis-1480547063" style="text-decoration: none;">made a killing</a>&nbsp;on their purchase.</b> In 2009, Mnuchin's investment group bought the failed mortgage bank <b>IndyMac,</b> which had been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after the financial crisis, <b>changing the name to OneWest.</b> They paid about $1.5 billion, with the FDIC sharing the ongoing mortgage losses.<b> George Soros, </b>a Clinton backer at whose hedge fund Mnuchin had worked, and <b>John Paulson</b>, a hedge fund manager who also supported Trump, invested alongside Mnuchin in IndyMac. &nbsp;[ // russian oligarchs?]</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, CIT, a lender to small and medium-sized businesses, bought OneWest for $3.4 billion, more than doubling the Mnuchin group's initial investment. Mnuchin personally made about $380 million on the sale, according to Bloomberg estimates. He retains around a 1 percent stake in CIT, worth around $100 million, which he may have to divest if confirmed.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CIT has found the reverse mortgage business to be a headache. Recently, CIT took a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-13/mnuchin-s-reverse-mortgage-woes-blemish-record-of-treasury-pick" style="text-decoration: none;">$230 million pretax charge</a>&nbsp;after it discovered that OneWest had mistakenly charged the government for payments that the company should have shouldered itself. An investigation of Financial Freedom's practices by HUD's inspector general is ongoing.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yang's lawyers at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid fought his foreclosure for a year. Though Yang had run a dry cleaning business in Florida and roamed the world as a missionary, working in North Korea, China, and Afghanistan, the bank's torrent of paperwork had overwhelmed him. Yang didn't speak English well. OneWest claimed it had sent him forms to verify he was living at his home, but that he never sent them back.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under HUD rules, OneWest was required to verify that each borrower continued to use the property as a principal residence. It is a condition of all the HUD-backed loans in order to help ensure the government subsidy goes to those who need it.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Yang can be forgiven for thinking that OneWest could not have doubted that he was still in his home. During the same period that OneWest was moving to foreclose on Yang for not living in his home, another arm of the bank regularly spoke and corresponded with him at his home about a delinquent insurance payment, according to court documents.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A Financial Freedom employee testified in the case that the department that handled delinquent insurance payments and the department that handled occupancy did not communicate with each other in those circumstances.</b></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em>ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.</em></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;" /><div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_economy" style="width: 630px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Kiel is a reporter for&nbsp;<a href="http://propublica.org/" style="text-decoration: none;">ProPublica</a>.&nbsp;</font></em></font></font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/05/19634/donald-trumps-new-finance-guru-once-clinton-donor-soros-employee</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><div class="container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; width: 1280px; line-height: 28px;"><div class="field-item even first" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="body-copy-inner" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 410px 0px 250px; border: 0px; width: 1280px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/16/17488/9-things-know-about-donald-trump" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;himself, the Trump campaign’s new national finance chairman has a long history of contributing to Democrats — including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/07/19521/how-citizens-united-helping-hillary-clinton-win-white-house" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Hillary Clinton</a>.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Private investor&nbsp;<a href="http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/relativity-steve-mnuchin-co-chairman-1201557256/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Steven Mnuchin</a>, Trump’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-announces-national-finance-chairman" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">new</a>campaign fundraising guru, has contributed more than $120,000 to a mix of Democrats, Republicans and bipartisan political groups since 1995, a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Center for Public Integrity</a>&nbsp;analysis of Federal Election Commission and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Center for Responsive Politics</a>&nbsp;data indicates.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the years, more than half of Mnuchin’s federal-level political contributions have benefited Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Clinton, Trump’s all-but-certain general election rival.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About one-third of Mnuchin’s giving has benefited Republicans. The rest has gone to nonpartisan political action committees such as the PAC of Goldman Sachs, where Mnuchin worked for 17 years.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Each election cycle, Mnuchin — also a bankroller of blockbuster movies such as “American Sniper,” “Gravity” and “Avatar” — has frequently donated to the campaigns of presidential contenders.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the 2000 presidential election, Mnuchin donated to Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley and Republican Steve Forbes.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the 2004 presidential race, he donated to two Democratic candidates: John Kerry and John Edwards.</font></font></font></p></div></div></div><div class="container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; width: 1280px; line-height: 28px;"><div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><publici-ad-unit name="Article-In-Text-Pushdown-Top" class="ng-isolate-scope" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="unit Article-In-Text-Pushdown-Top" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="creative Email-Subscribe-Article-In-Text" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><publici-ad-creative class="ng-isolate-scope" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div ng-class="{'container':creative.opts.container}" class="ng-scope" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><nav class="email-signup-form-wrapper ng-scope" ng-controller="EmailSubscribeController" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="email-signup-form clearfix collapsed" ng-class="{collapsed:collapsed}" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 14px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: url(" sites="sites" publici="publici" themes="themes" publici_theme="publici_theme" images="images" sprites="sprites" newsletter-sprites-low.png="newsletter-sprites-low.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-position-x="background-position-x" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></nav></div></publici-ad-creative></div></div></publici-ad-unit></font></font><div class="body-copy-inner" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 410px 0px 250px; border: 0px; width: 1280px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And ahead of the 2008 presidential election, Mnuchin donated not only to Obama, Clinton and Edwards, but also to Democrats Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson. Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney also received contributions from Mnuchin.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the 2012 presidential race, Mnuchin donated to both Romney and fellow Republican Tim Pawlenty.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin’s contributions to Democrats extend to the current cycle.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For instance, he&nbsp;<a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/senate/sforms/C00571919/1372/sa/11AI/6" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">donated</a>&nbsp;$2,000 in February to the U.S. Senate campaign of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Last year, Harris&nbsp;<a href="http://blog.sfgate.com/politics/2015/07/10/kamala-harris-speaks-out-on-steinle-sanctuary-sheriff-and-trump/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">described Trump</a>, who had personally contributed money&nbsp;<a href="http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2016/may/03/ted-cruz/yep-donald-trump-gave-12k-jerry-brown-gavin-newsom/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">in 2013</a>&nbsp;to Harris’ political committee, as “someone who clearly cannot be a leader.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin and the Trump campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on Mnuchin’s political contributions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner, is the chairman and chief executive officer of private investment company Dune Capital LP.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mnuchin also has professional ties to George Soros, the billionaire financier who’s contributed tens of millions of dollars to Democratic political causes over the years,<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/07/19528/inside-hillary-clintons-big-money-cavalry" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">including $7 million</a>&nbsp;this election cycle to Priorities USA Action, a pro-Clinton super PAC.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From 2003 to 2004, Mnuchin worked as chief executive of SFM Capital Management, which the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wall Street Journal</em>&nbsp;reports is&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/01/02/deal-maker-profile-new-indymac-ceo-steve-mnuchin/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">backed by Soros</a>. He also worked for Soros Fund Management LLC,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=1492034&privcapId=2522804" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">according to Bloomberg</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">(The Center for Public Integrity receives funding from the&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Open Society Foundations</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">, which Soros funds. A complete list of Center for Public Integrity funders is</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">found here</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">.)</em></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump himself has been&nbsp;<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/donald-trump-donations-democrats-hillary-clinton-119071" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">forced to defend</a>&nbsp;his past campaign contributions to Democrats this cycle, arguing that there are few alternatives to Democrats in New York.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Am I going to contribute to a Republican for my whole life when they get, they run against some Democrat?” he said. “And the most they can get is one percent of the vote.”</font></p></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>