How Steven Mnuchin leveraged the 2008 meltdown to become the most powerful Treasury secretary in U.S. history. EricLevitz writes
Illustration: Joe Darrow Steve Mnuchin knows his way around a crisis. Twelve years ago, the Treasury secretary was still a middling multi-millionaire of little renown or historical import. But whenever God closes a door on an underwater home-owner, he opens a window to an unscrupulous speculator, and in 2008, the Big Man began closing a lot of doors. Mnuchin didn’t miss his opening.
Of course, it wasn’t really God who opened the window to Mnuchin’s foreclosure profiteering or the profiteering of all the well-heeled investors who bought low during the financial crisis, then sold high amid the bailout-buoyed recovery . Rather, it was an economic system that keeps a wide swath of Americans one bad break from financial ruin — and another tiny class draped in gold-plated armor.
Steve Mnuchin wasn’t born on third base so much as a few inches to the left of home plate. His grandfather co-founded a yacht club in the Hamptons. His father was a Yale-educated partner at Goldman Sachs. If his family’s name didn’t secure Steve’s own Yale admission, its wealth certainly covered his tuition, books, personal Porsche, and “dorm” at New Haven’s Taft Hotel. From this perch, it would have been harder for Mnuchin to tumble down America’s class ladder than to climb higher still.
Early in his career, Mnuchin had watched his superiors turn America’s savings-and-loan crisis into their own buying-and-selling bonanza. In the summer of 2008, Mnuchin was watching television in his New York office when an invitation to emulate his old mentors flashed across the screen: Out in California, frightened depositors were lined up outside IndyMac, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, waiting to withdraw their cash.
This decision baffled some of Mnuchin’s Hollywood pals. The bankroller of The LEGO Batman Movie didn’t strike them as a political animal, let alone a Trumpist. But his motives weren’t mysterious. For someone in Mnuchin’s socioeconomic position, Trump’s presidential campaign was just another low-risk, high-reward bet. Or, as Mnuchin himself put it in an interview in August 2016, “Nobody’s going to be like, ‘Well, why did he do this?,’ if I end up in the administration.
But this is still a Republican stimulus, however much schmoozing Steve has done with Chuck and Nancy this spring. Congress’s persistent underfunding of the small-business aid has kept America’s most vulnerable mom-and-pops out in the cold. And our nation’s decrepit unemployment-insurance offices have struggled to administer benefits as the ranks of the jobless grow millions stronger every week.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Steve Carell Posts Sweet Thank You To Staff Of Hospital Where His Mom WorkedCarell, who was born at Emerson Hospital in Massachusetts, pays tribute to frontline health care workers battling COVID-19.
Read more »
Bank of America CEO says economy won't fully rebound from coronavirus fallout until 'late next year'Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin offered a more optimistic assessment, saying that the economy would 'really bounce back in July and August.'
Read more »
Coronavirus: Steven Mnuchin says economy will rebound over the summerMnuchin said the Paycheck Protection Program for small business and stimulus checks for Americans will help the economy rebound as early as July.
Read more »
U.S. economy to reopen in May and June and then ‘really bounce back,’ Mnuchin says, but others are thinking fall'You’re going to see the economy really bounce back in July, August and September,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says.
Read more »
U.S. economy to reopen in May and June and then ‘really bounce back,’ Mnuchin saysThe U.S. economy ‘will really bounce back’ starting in July said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday
Read more »