We look at two of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks: Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary. Mnuchin has deep ties on Wall Street, including working as a partner for Goldman Sachs, and his hedge fund played a role in the housing crisis after it scooped up the failing California bank IndyMac in 2008. Trump’s commerce secretary pick, Wilbur Ross, is a billionaire private equity investor who specializes in flipping bankrupt companies for profit, often buying the US companies at low prices and then selling them to overseas investors. He and his companies have sometimes shipped jobs and factories overseas — practices Donald Trump has railed against. We are joined by David Dayen, whose recent article for The Nation is “Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin — Profiteers of the Great Foreclosure Machine — Go to Washington.”
TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman. We turn to look in more detail at two of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary. Mnuchin has deep ties on Wall Street, including working as a partner for Goldman Sachs, where his father also worked. Mnuchin’s hedge fund also played a role in the housing crisis after it scooped up the failing California bank IndyMac in 2008. Under Mnuchin’s ownership, IndyMac foreclosed on 36,000 families, particularly elderly residents trapped in reverse mortgages. Mnuchin was accused of running a foreclosure machine. People protested outside his home. The bank, which was renamed OneWest, was also accused of racially discriminatory lending practices. In 2015, Mnuchin sold the bank for $3.4 billion, $1.8 billion more than he bought it for.
Trump’s Commerce Secretary pick, Wilbur Ross, is a billionaire private equity investor. Ross specializes in flipping bankrupt companies for profit, often buying the US companies at low prices then selling them to overseas investors. He and his…