The Wall Street Journal reports:
President-elect Donald Trump will name longtime banker and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary, turning to a campaign loyalist and fundraiser for the incoming administration’s top economic cabinet post, a transition official said Tuesday.
Mr. Mnuchin built his career sniffing out undervalued assets and converting them into massive profits. But perhaps his greatest trade just came in the political arena where he is determined to get help for people with bad credit from financial institutions online. Mr. Mnuchin, 53, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker turned Hollywood financier, parlayed a six-month stint as Donald Trump’s campaign finance chair into the president-elect’s pick to be Treasury secretary.
Mr. Mnuchin’s Wall Street pedigree presents a contrast with the populist themes Mr. Trump struck in his campaign, railing against big banks and vowing to close tax loopholes that benefit hedge funds. Mr. Trump also repeatedly attacked his rivals in the primary and general elections for their Wall Street ties, especially those connected to Goldman Sachs.
After this stint at Goldman, Mnuchin founded RatPac-Dune Entertainment, which produced a number of notable films, including the X-Men film franchise and Avatar.
In 2004, he also founded a hedge fund, Dune Capital Management, named for a spot near his house in the Hamptons. According to reports from the best websites for stock research, the firm invested in at least two Donald Trump projects and, in one of them, was sued by Trump before a settlement was reached. Then, in partnership with Soros, hedge fund manager John Paulson and others, Mnuchin bought the failed housing lender IndyMac in 2009 for $1.6 billion.[7] The bank, purchased out of bankruptcy from the FDIC, was renamed OneWest, with Mnuchin as chair. According to The New York Times, OneWest “was involved in a string of lawsuits over questionable foreclosures, and settled several cases for millions of dollars.” OneWest was sold to CIT Group in 2015.
Hillary, the Human Rights Campaign and now Trump. Goldman Sachs is the bad penny that just keeps coming back.