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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Conned the Banksters, Too

Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Conned the Banksters, Too

by Anne Laurie|  December 1, 20161:44 am| 40 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Venality

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Hedge fund manager takes "glee" in Trump conning voters with anti-Wall Street message. https://t.co/Mq5ufhSRt8 pic.twitter.com/4yJGo1IEpM

— Pete Schroeder (@peteschroeder) November 30, 2016

No mark so doomed as the mark who thinks he’s in on the long con. From the Bloomberg article [warning: autoplay]:

… Mnuchin, 53, the son of a Goldman Sachs partner, thrived at the institutions Trump mocked during the campaign. He was tapped into the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale, joined the bank and became a top executive, ran a hedge fund and invested in Hollywood blockbusters. When he saw TV news shots of customers lined up outside a branch of California bank IndyMac trying to pull their money in 2008, he spotted an opportunity.

“I’ve seen this game before,” he recalled saying in an interview earlier this year. “This bank is going to end up failing, and we need to figure out how to buy it.”

Mnuchin gathered billionaires including George Soros and John Paulson and assembled a $1.6 billion bid to buy IndyMac. They rebranded it OneWest and sold the bank in August 2015 for $3.4 billion. It carried out more than 36,000 foreclosures during Mnuchin’s reign, according to the nonprofit California Reinvestment Coalition, which accused OneWest of shoddy foreclosure practices and avoiding business in largely black or Latino neighborhoods, claims the bank has denied.

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who leads the Financial Services Roundtable, a bank lobbying group, thinks any rage over Mnuchin’s pedigree will fade if he does his job well. “If those results are really good for everyday Americans, it will be ‘mission accomplished,” Pawlenty said. “The public’s focus will soon shift.”…

Another former Goldman Sachs banker, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, is said by analysts to be under consideration for a job as a top Treasury deputy. He’s well known for once asking President Barack Obama when he’d stop bashing Wall Street. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, worked at Goldman Sachs, too…

Trump’s throwing open the gates to the worst of the predators, and the Wall Street herd is too busy making fun of ‘blue-collar workers’ to remember that those predators will chew up their tidy little portfolios, too.

At least the guy quoted in the top tweet has the excuse of being a Hillary voter:

… Tilson, who was relieved Trump picked an industry veteran instead of a wildcard, still has concerns, especially because Trump promised to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act, enacted after the financial crisis almost toppled the global economy.

“I’m a fan of Dodd-Frank, I think banking should be boring,” said Tilson, who voted for Hillary Clinton. “I worry about Wall Street returning to being a casino.”…

Because, yeah, TRUMP IS A YUUUGE FAILURE WHEN IT COMES TO RUNNING CASINOS, banksters!

At least my senior Senator didn’t waste the last two years on a crusade to appeal to the Alt-Left purity ponies, so she’s got her place on the barricades prepped…

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is worried, too. “Mnuchin is the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis — he managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street,” the Democrat said in a statement. “His selection as Treasury secretary should send shivers down the spine of every American who got hit hard by the financial crisis.”

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40Comments

  1. 1.

    Mnemosyne

    December 1, 2016 at 2:05 am

    You know, if Trump voters had really picked him because they were feeling “economically insecure” and upset with Wall Street and banksters, they would be screaming bloody murder right now. And yet, they’re not. Funny, that.

  2. 2.

    amk

    December 1, 2016 at 2:11 am

    forrest gump? how?

    horrible analogy, liz.

  3. 3.

    Schlemazel

    December 1, 2016 at 2:16 am

    @Mnemosyne:
    You would have to assume they are paying attention. I don’t think they are. They believed they have done their duty in stopping the tax raising regulation mandating bad for business Democrat and nothing more is required.

  4. 4.

    GxB

    December 1, 2016 at 2:31 am

    You know who else was a yoooge failure at business and became CiC?

    Harry Truman.

    Course Truman had the depression (quite possibly legit) to blame, and turned out a fair CiC. I don’t think for a nanosecond that it will be the case this time. This incompetent fucker is going to be the Centralia mine fire of the CiCs. We’ll be attempting to put out his horseshit fires decades, possibly centuries, in the future should he be sworn in. I knew we were stupid – but I still can’t quite believe we were this fucking stupid. I mean come on… Jeezuz people, think just a smidge will ya…

    The biggest problem I have with Chump, the GoP, and the electorate in general is the complete, total, and utter inability to see reality. Once you can no longer relate to another person on what the facts are… well, you are a bit screwed as to what the next step is. Frankly, I’m seeing a split in this country – whether it is peaceful or not is yet to be seen. I know damn well what side I will be on should such a thing occur. Hint – my bags are packed, and what little I have will be easily left behind.

  5. 5.

    NotoriousJRT

    December 1, 2016 at 2:33 am

    @amk:
    Gosh,she explained it for you….

  6. 6.

    Schlemazel

    December 1, 2016 at 2:40 am

    @GxB:
    Ah . . . Truman . . . depression? You may want tor eview your timeline

  7. 7.

    shortribs

    December 1, 2016 at 2:49 am

    @amk: I didn’t really get that analogy either. Wyden and Sherrod Brown’s comments were much more pointed I thought.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/senate-democrats-criticize-mnuchin-treasury

  8. 8.

    magurakurin

    December 1, 2016 at 3:02 am

    @amk: yeah, maybe she didn’t see the movie. Forrest is the good guy, right? I mean, the way I saw the film, he represents us as we watched the turmoil and change of the 60’s and 70’s happened around us. And through it all we stay true to our values as it were and survive. Mind you, I don’t like that movie and don’t really agree with its premise, but that is the message I thought the film maker was trying to convey.

    but yeah, shitty analogy. In fact, maybe it is time to stop with the name calling from her. It hasn’t actually worked…honestly, I’m thinking she really isn’t all that.

  9. 9.

    magurakurin

    December 1, 2016 at 3:03 am

    @shortribs: agreed.

  10. 10.

    Oatler.

    December 1, 2016 at 3:14 am

    “managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street,” A lot of stone innocent Gumps around Washington.

  11. 11.

    GxB

    December 1, 2016 at 3:23 am

    @Schlemazel: Not saying Truman was the depression prez – he was a businessman (haberdasher) prior to the depression thus his failure. It does look as though he was a cog in the government wheel during the depression proper.

  12. 12.

    RK

    December 1, 2016 at 3:26 am

    Alt-Left? Could you define that?

  13. 13.

    joel hanes

    December 1, 2016 at 3:32 am

    @Schlemazel:

    I think the claim is that Truman’s business failure happened during the Great Depression,
    not that Truman was ever President during the Great Depression. Even that claim is … nuanced.

    Perhaps it refers to the mining and development investments he made in the ’20s, which mostly went bust; or to the failure of his KC haberdashery in 1921 (he worked until 1934 to pay off the debtors), or to his 1924-1925 stint as a salesman for automobile club memberships.

    From 1926 onward, Truman seems to have had secure positions in the Democratic political machine.

  14. 14.

    Darkrose

    December 1, 2016 at 3:35 am

    Wow.

    Tim Ryan, the guy who wanted to replace Nancy Pelosi, was on Tweety’s show tonight. When comparing pragmatic midwesterners to coastal elitists he dropped the phrase “dago red wine” (as opposed to Napa Chardonnay). Tweety laughed it off.

    Clip here

  15. 15.

    GxB

    December 1, 2016 at 3:37 am

    @Schlemazel: Re-read your comment, and I can see why it could cause confusion. Whoops! Funny how things can be said and their intent is completely misconstrued. My bad here though, rest assured I’m fully aware of the WWI through the WWII years even if my statements are muddled.

    Fake edit to add: yeah, what Joel said.

  16. 16.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    December 1, 2016 at 3:50 am

    @GxB: Truman did fail in business; but what separates him and the ShitGibbon is that Harry tried to pay his creditors back for years, ShitGibbon not so much.

  17. 17.

    gene108

    December 1, 2016 at 3:55 am

    @Schlemazel:

    I agree with this. I bet a lot of Trump voters could not name a Cabinet Secretary and figure, if Trump’s doing it, it must be awesome.

  18. 18.

    TriassicSands

    December 1, 2016 at 3:58 am

    @Mnemosyne:

    They’d have to be paying attention in order to scream “bloody murder.” But paying attention is not what people who vote for Trump do. They latch onto a promise that fits their needs and then tune everything else out.

  19. 19.

    Anne Laurie

    December 1, 2016 at 4:00 am

    @magurakurin:

    Forrest is the good guy, right?

    IIRC, Forrest is a near-moron who just happens to be standing around at all the most important historical pivots in 1960/70s America. Just as Mnuchin, per Mnuchin, just happened to be standing around (with a crowbar & a sack) for every Wall Street smash’n’grab on our economy over the last couple decades.

    Zelig might’ve been a better film-school analogy, but how many Heartland Muricans know from Woody Allen movies?

  20. 20.

    GxB

    December 1, 2016 at 4:06 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Bingo. We’re through the looking glass here (as it has been said before) and it doesn’t look promising. The only other thing I was trying to point out is that the FAILING CiC’s were successful businessmen: Harding, Hoover, and the inimitable [sic] GWB… It has only gotten worse as time goes on – this may be the singularity of incompetence.

  21. 21.

    opiejeanne

    December 1, 2016 at 4:28 am

    @joel hanes: My mother’s family is from Independence/KC, after they left the Ozarks. The Pendergast political machine that forced Truman on FDR was notorious in KC, Mo, including bodies that fell from running boards of cars traveling along Cliff Drive late at night, complete with bullet holes in vital spots.
    My grandfather told us tales of the threats at work, that if an election wasn’t won by the correct man they’d all be laid off; he worked for Standard Oil at the time.

  22. 22.

    opiejeanne

    December 1, 2016 at 4:35 am

    @Anne Laurie: Pardon my moment of grief over the demise of IndyMac. We had a small second mortgage, a credit line with a controlled variable interest rate, with them for a few years and they were very good to us. It was the easiest loan we ever got and the interest rate suddenly started going DOWN month after month, until it hit 1.5% along about 2008. It has been our experience with every other mortgage, 1st or 2nd, that there is a floor that it can’t drop below, but IndyMac hadn’t set one for this loan.
    I called them when it went below our starting point and they said there was no mistake; we speculated that that was why they were in trouble later.

  23. 23.

    Sab

    December 1, 2016 at 4:47 am

    @Darkrose: I can’t stand Tim Ryan (he’s my congress critter) but this alleged ethnic slur is total b.s. Tim Ryan’s mother’s maiden name is Rizzi. He’s as Italian-American as they come. That wine comment was class not ethnic. And if Tweety had spent five seconds on Google he would have known that.

  24. 24.

    Linda

    December 1, 2016 at 4:55 am

    There may be another reason that blue collar workers aren’t screaming bloody murder. Maybe they really didn’t think Trump was a fellow prole at all. Maybe they are just beaten down and cynical to feel that there is really no hope of beating the system, and that their best bet is to have a billionaire insider in the White House who will somehow treat them like his special pet. They will probably be disappointed with in this too eventually.

  25. 25.

    daveNYC

    December 1, 2016 at 5:30 am

    Trump’s throwing open the gates to the worst of the predators, and the Wall Street herd is too busy making fun of ‘blue-collar workers’ to remember that those predators will chew up their tidy little portfolios, too.

    Ha! Won’t happen. Or at least it won’t happen to the point where it will cause them real pain. It’s all a matter of how much the front office guys can pull down in bonuses before the whole thing crashes. Sure the hedge fund they’re running might go under, but if you’ve already banked a few million off the salary and the two and twenty, who fucking cares?

  26. 26.

    Kay

    December 1, 2016 at 5:54 am

    They’ll love how he kisses their ass so it will go great for a while but they’re actually, in reality, really reckless and greedy so they’ll tank the world economy again.

    This is what Trump will end up saying:

    “I’ve seen this game before,” he recalled saying in an interview earlier this year. “This bank is going to end up failing, and we need to figure out how to buy it.”

    They, and we, never learn. The crashes after each bubble in my adult life have gotten worse and worse and this one will occur after they’ve cut out most of the safety net, so it will be epic. If you thought 2009-10 was bad, wait until these guys get their greedy mitts on Social Security and then crash it.

    We had 16% unemployment where I live the last time they tanked the economy and the one and only reason we didn’t have bread lines and tent cities was because of food stamps, unemployment, and heating and housing vouchers. We would have had to lay off public school teachers and combine grades without the stimulus.

    It’ll be truly ugly next time, but maybe we need that. It seems like we do.

  27. 27.

    Kay

    December 1, 2016 at 6:06 am

    It’s smart, short term and politically. He’ll kiss their ass and they’ll sing his praises and it will be happy days are here again right up until the epic crash, like last time and the time before that and the time before that.

    Then we can have 4 or 8 years of sober reflection and millions of words written in analysis and we’ll all vow to be better and then it starts all over again. People compare it to a casino but the better comparison is to addicts. This is the start of the next bender. The next Democrat will preside over the hangover.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    December 1, 2016 at 6:10 am

    I wish I was either a little bit older or a little bit younger. I’ll get the fake boom AND the epic crash in the time I have left to work, but I won’t get the next fake boom after that. My timing is off.

  29. 29.

    Darkrose

    December 1, 2016 at 6:17 am

    @Sab: I…okay. See, as someone who doesn’t know Tim Ryan’s family tree, it was pretty shocking to hear him use a word that I’ve only ever heard used as an anti-Italian slur, especially when the topic under discussion was his attempt to unseat the very Italian Nancy Pelosi. I wouldn’t be okay with Keith Ellison dropping an n-bomb on TV either.

    Not to mention that it’s a stupid comment. It’s bad enough that Republicans want to dismiss those of us on the coasts as being something other than “real Americans”. I don’t need that bullshit from my own party.

  30. 30.

    JJ

    December 1, 2016 at 6:24 am

    @Kay: Reading your comment about bad timing resonates for me too. And ratchets up the now daily chest pain. In other news sometimes I go to Tr*mp’s fb page just to be a masochist. I can report some early grumblings developing there.

  31. 31.

    Procopius

    December 1, 2016 at 8:26 am

    Wish I could remember the details. A couple of books I read on con games sixty or more years ago mentioned at least one classic game where one or more of the marks were supposedly enlisted to help the grifter con one or more other marks. As was mentioned in passing in the article, that looks like what’s happening here with the bankers. In the end they’re going to be skinned, too.

  32. 32.

    Barry

    December 1, 2016 at 8:57 am

    @Procopius: this is where I disagree. Goldman Sachs, in particularly, seems to be running a very successful shadow government. They will get their hundreds of billions, destroy trillions, and get away with it.

  33. 33.

    Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire

    December 1, 2016 at 9:03 am

    @JJ: You are doing God’s (or deity of your choice, or none at all) work. I couldn’t do it. I’d want to throw my phone/laptop/iPad.

  34. 34.

    Jinchi

    December 1, 2016 at 9:39 am

    @amk:

    forrest gump? how?
    horrible analogy, liz.

    That was my first thought, too. Forrest Gump’s character was written as an entirely sympathetic person who overcame every handicap in his life. He literally threw off his crutches to become a championship athelete. Sure he was at every major event during his lifetime, but he wasn’t literally one of the men barricading the doors to the University of Alabama.

  35. 35.

    liberal

    December 1, 2016 at 9:49 am

    “I worry about Wall Street returning to being a ca sino.”

    Returning?

    LOL.

  36. 36.

    GrandJury

    December 1, 2016 at 10:12 am

    @JJ: It never ends well for demagogue facists. I doubt there will be a honeymoon and buyers remorse will set in rather quickly.

  37. 37.

    Barbara

    December 1, 2016 at 10:57 am

    @Sab: For Americans who have successfully crossed over into the assimilated pool of those who are “just” white, what were once ethnic slurs sometimes become terms of endearment. Having gone to high school with a bunch of first generation Italian-Americans, this seemed to be happening even 30 years ago. I had a close friend who always referred to himself as “just a dago.” It’s a bad practice to assume that a wider audience shares this cultural understanding, however, and even though I kind of know where Ryan was probably coming from on this one, I would NEVER refer to a person as a dago. My uncle’s wife was the daughter of an Italian immigrant who made his own wine, which, whenever it was mentioned, my uncle would scrunch up his face into a sour expression and say, “you mean the vinegar your father makes.” I assume that Ryan is referencing a similar kind of history.

  38. 38.

    Ksmiami

    December 1, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    @GxB: this is my biggest fear as well- Republicans don’t live in reality so there are no normal arguments to make with them. Plus they are rigidly married to ideology that fails in the real world time and again. So we will have 2 americas eventually- though I dare say that with the shift against Medicare and social security, rural white america will die off sooner.

  39. 39.

    RaflW

    December 1, 2016 at 2:02 pm

    So that’s where our horrible ex-governor (Pawlenty) ended up. In the highly lucrative but disgusting rectums of bing banking. Blergh.

  40. 40.

    Partisan Cheese

    December 1, 2016 at 4:14 pm

    Goddamn, Anne Laurie, if you are going to start calling progressive voters the alt left, like they are the equivalent of the alt right, you are the problem. Your snide dismissal of things being too left for you is another form of purity politics, where unless they fit your narrow centrist paradigm, they should be mocked, and hated. The progressive base, the Sanders/Warren wing, are the main ones who are hitting back hard on Trump right now, but because you are so fucking butthurt over their ‘betrayal’, you refuse to acknowledge it. That is the kind of shit that will keep Dems out in the wilderness. Have some humility, try listening outside of your closed fucking ‘I determine what the right type of democrat is’ mind, and see that progressives are your ally, not some piece of shit alt left trash to blame all of the Dems faults on. You need to grow the fuck up.

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