The biggest disappointment regarding Donald Trump since being elected President has been his total embrace of dangerous Wall Street thieves. As it is currently structured and incentivized, the financial services industry represents one of the most destructive and least beneficial forces within the U.S. economy. It is essentially a parasitic industry.
Unfortunately, Trump didn’t merely pick one or two competent finance guys to be in charge of finance-related jobs. Rather, he decided to surround himself with some of the worst of the worst (see links at the end) within an industry that often operates like a criminal syndicate. Treasury Secretary pick Steven Mnuchin is one of these people, and I believe this choice represents the single biggest mistake Trump has made as President-elect.
A very large percentage of the American public (including myself), remain irate at the complete lack of any justice served with regard to finance criminals in the aftermath of the economic collapse of 2008/09. When it comes to greedy, unethical behavior in the wake of that tragic period, Steve Mnuchin is in a class of his own. To appoint such a toxic financial oligarch to Treasury Secretary is a serious slap in the face to all American citizens.
Journalist David Dayen accurately described Mnuchin as the “Anti-Populist from Hell” in an excellent article published back in May of last year. Yesterday, he published what can be seen as a followup to that piece, in which he details the findings of a leaked memo from top California prosecutors who were looking to bring forward a case against OneWest for over a thousand legal violations they discovered. Inexplicably, the case never went forward, and the woman who had been in charge of the investigation, state attorney general Kamala Harris, has now been elected to the U.S. Senate.
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