#mnuchin — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #mnuchin, aggregated by home.social.
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Others in the Trump inner circle who made their fortunes via privately held ventures include treasury secretary
#Steven T. #Mnuchin, who got a great deal during the financial crisis on IndyMac, a mortgage lending bank,
thanks to our government’s penchant for the socialization of risk and privatization of profit when entities considered “too big to fail” go into a state of distress.Mnuchin and his fellow investors, a group that included liberal donor and hedge-fund honcho George Soros, changed the company name to #OneWest and began to aggressively foreclose on homeowners.
The bank earned Mnuchin and his partners a profit of $1.6 billion in its first year of operation,
even as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was preparing to take a hit of nearly $11 billion “on bad loans that the Pasadena institution made before it was sold last March and renamed OneWest Bank,” according to E. Scott Reckard of the Los Angeles Times.Then there’s commerce secretary #Wilbur #Ross, worth $2.5 billion according to Forbes, who started a second career in 2000 with the creation of his eponymous investment company,
which he later sold to Invesco for a reported $375 million.#Reed #Cordish, special assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives, is a scion of the family that owns privately held Cordish Companies,
involved in gaming and entertainment.
He’s said to be tight with Jared Kushner.#Sonny #Perdue, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, founded the private company Perdue Inc., a trucking outfit,
with his wife, Mary, who was reported in 2005 to be the company’s sole shareholder.
(An official at Perdue Inc. declined to confirm to The Baffler whether this is still the case.)And, while not a rich guy himself, CIA director #Mike #Pompeo founded a private company called #Thayer #Aerospace in the late 1990s with help from Koch Venture Capital, an arm of Koch Industries.
A Pompeo aide told the Washington Post that the Koch investment amounted to only 2 percent,
but there’s no way to really know, since the transaction took place between two privately held companies.
He later became president of #Sentry #International, another private company, before his 2010 run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he won, again with an assist from the Koch brothers.
He’s also a climate-change denier—an appealing trait in a public official if you’re a fossil fuels magnate looking to buy one -
Would I be mistaken in assuming that #Mnuchin, #Trumps treasure secretary, would do the same to TikTok as Musk did to Twitter? It's flabbergasting that even Dems and President #Biden are quick to agree to ban #TikTok. https://apnews.com/article/mnuchin-tiktok-nycb-indymac-lego-movie-5527566c81a6f3d9b288bba232f55684
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“Everyone wants to build a #TikTok-level #algorithm. That’s a key element of competition in… #tech …right now,” said Matt Perault, UNC prof & fmr #Facebook dir who studies tech #policy.
“…the biggest cos have thrown a lot of money & #engineering talent at that issue & have struggled to do it. If #Mnuchin thinks he can do that & succeed where…successful cos have struggled, good luck.”
Mnuchin, [is] a fmr hedge fund mngr & Hollywood producer w/no #SocialMedia experience…. -
Observers, & ≥1 person familiar w/the pitch, have said the idea is so far-fetched that it suggests a lack of familiarity w/how #tech companies work. #TikTok users flocked to the #app bc of its surprising suggestions for videos they might like, & there’s no guarantee any #Mnuchin-driven version could duplicate that success — or beat rivals like #Meta & #Google, who have worked for yrs to mirror the experience w/in their own respective apps, #Instagram & #YouTube.
#algorithms #SocialMedia #policy -
Fmr #Trump treas sec #Mnuchin is telling investors he has a plan to buy #TikTok
Mnuchin told potential backers he aims to maneuver around its price of >$100B & #China’s ban of the export of recommendation #algorithms.
He indicated he could overcome those hurdles by offering to buy the #app w/o the export-blocked #code, essentially forcing his consortium to remake a service built on billions of lines of code.#tech #SocialMedia #business #policy #regulation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/30/tiktok-mnuchin-sale-algorithm/ -
Mr #Mnuchin returned to banking during the financial crisis, gathering a group of investors including hedge fund bigwigs George #Soros and John @Paulson, private equity investor Christopher #Flowers and computer mogul Michael #Dell to buy failed mortgage lender #IndyMac.
The bank, renamed #OneWest Bank, returned to financial health but it became known for quickly seizing the homes of borrowers who fell behind on their mortgage payments.
In 2009, a New York judge called OneWest's behaviour "#harsh, @repugnant, #shocking and #repulsive'' in trying to foreclose on a New York family.
OneWest said it "respectfully disagreed" with the court. Two years later, protesters marched on Mr Mnuchin's Los Angeles mansion accusing OneWest Bank of aggressive foreclosure practices.
It was sold to CIT Group in 2015 in a lucrative deal
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The media continues to discuss #Trump’s #criminal #indictments, and is — finally! — noticing that Trump is becoming less and less #coherent.
But why isn’t it reporting on something almost every lawmaker and journalist in official Washington knows
— that Trump is remarkably #stupid?
I don’t mean just run-of-the-mill stupid.
I mean extraordinarily, off-the-charts, #stupifyingly #stupid.After all, he recently claimed that magnets don’t work in water, that the Civil War was unnecessary because it should have been “negotiated,” and that no one would know who Lincoln was if he hadn’t gone to war.
Still don’t believe Trump is stupid?
Consider the views of the people who worked most closely with him during his presidency.
Anyone remember when Secretary of State #Rex #Tillerson called Trump a “f—king #moron?”
Or when National Security Adviser #H.R. #McMaster called him a “#dope?”
And Treasury Secretary #Steve #Mnuchin, former White House Chief of Staff #Reince #Priebus, former White House Chief of Staff }John #Kelly, and even #Rupert #Murdoch all referred to Trump as an “#idiot?”
(Technically, Murdoch called him a “f—king idiot.”)https://robertreich.substack.com/p/seriously-how-dumb-is-trump?utm_medium=mastodon
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How would a #Mnuchin-aligned #ideologue use #TikTok data for political gain if #ByteDance were to sell it as a result of the proposed ban that the U.S. #House passed and sent to the #Senate? How would an #authoritarian with access to that data use it?
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China's ability to manipulate the public psyche through TikTok is a huge national security threat, which is why we're going to hand the reins to far-reich billionaires chummy with Putin and Mister Bone Saw instead. Make it make sense.
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Trump's Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is putting together an investor group to buy TikTok
Former Treasury Secretary Steven #Mnuchin is building an investor group to acquire #ByteDance’s #TikTok, as Congress threatens its continued existence in the U.S.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bipartisan bill that if signed into law would force ByteDance to either divest its flagship global app or face an effective ban on TikTok within the U.S.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/former-treasury-secretary-mnuchin-is-putting-together-an-investor-group-to-buy-tiktok.html -
The #Smirnov case has generated plenty of headlines and has caused the leading Republican impeachers—namely, Reps. James #Comer and Jim #Jordan—to look foolish.
But it’s important to view the Smirnov affair in this wider context: Republicans and the MAGA right have eagerly participated in Kremlin scheming to undermine BidenThis Moscow plot has been a matter of public record for years. In February 2020, intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers that Moscow was interfering in the election to assist Trump’s reelection.
(This briefing, of course, angered Trump, who had refused to acknowledge that a covert program authorized by Russian leader Vladimir Putin helped him win the White House four years earlier, and he replaced the acting director of national intelligence.)
Months later, William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, issued a statement declaring that Russia “is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden…Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”
That was related to #Giuliani’s endeavor.
The NCSC statement noted that a pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy #Derkach, the son of a former KGB official, was “spreading claims about corruption…to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.”In September 2020, Derkach was sanctioned by Trump’s Treasury Department, which called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and declared he was one of a group of “Russia-linked election interference actors.”
Treasury said Derkach had maintained “close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services” and had “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Steve #Mnuchin, remarked, “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.”
And who was working with Derkach to spread the false story that Joe Biden had blocked an investigation of Burisma? #Giuliani.
At one point, Derkach staged press conferences in Kyiv and played secretly recorded tapes of Biden speaking by phone with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Derkach insisted the recordings supported Giuliani’s allegations about Biden.
Yet the tapes revealed no misconduct. This was a disinformation stunt.
Ukrainians critical of Russia speculated that the tapes originated with Russian intelligence.
Giuliani never expressed shame for hooking up with a Russian agent. He publicly admitted he was in touch with Derkach and called him “very helpful.” He said that he and Derkach had spoken about Ukraine many times.
The bottom line: According to Trump administration officials, the Biden-Burisma allegations were in part (if not wholly) the work of Russian operatives.
Yet Trump, the MAGA right, and their media allies have been beating this drum for years, and once the GOP won back the House in 2022, it became impeachment fodder.
Then Comer, Jordan, and the rest of their crew embraced Smirnov’s charges, even though they were not substantiated and even though they were in sync with a known Russian disinformation plot that targeted Biden to aid Trump.
Moreover, it was highly suspicious that Smirnov shared his allegations with his FBI handler in June 2020
—after not mentioning them for years
—just when Giuliani and other Trumpers were striving to tar Joe Biden with this false tale.But none of that matters for the Party of Trump and its leader.
They seem unconcerned about collaborating—colluding?—with a Kremlin operation.
After all, it worked for Trump in 2016, and since then he and his cult have demonstrated no reluctance to be exploited by Russia or to exploit Russian disinformation, even as Putin wages a horrendous war in Ukraine and intensifies his repressive and murderous reign at home.
The Smirnov case—of which there is much more to learn—shows not only that Trump and the GOP are Putin dupes;
they are willing dupes. -
He was auditing his enemies while the IRS failed in its mandate to audit him. #Trump #Mnuchin #TrumpTaxes #IRS
