Trump has picked Steve Mnuchen to be Secretary of the Treasury, according to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, and many other sources. Mnuchen is probably better than many people that Trump might have picked, but I would have liked to see some other possibilities. I would have prefered someone who was not a Wall Street-Goldman Sachs alumnus. I would also prefer that he had not foreclosed on tens of thousands of homeowners who held IndyMac mortgages while getting government assistance. Like Trump, who paid no taxes, he is a billionaire beneficiary of government welfare.
I also wonder where his primary allegiance is. Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, was instrumental in repealing Glass-Steagle, which was a huge benefit to Wall Street, but came back to haunt homeowners many of whom lost their homes, and taxpayers, who had to bailout the bankers. The bankers rewarded Bill and Hillary Clinton handsomely, as well as Robert Rubin, who moved on to a top job at Citibank that paid well but had little responsibility. Although Rubin guided the US through a financial crisis, his overall record seems to favor Wall Street over the best interests of the United States, since those interests often conflict, as they did in 2008. I hope that Mnuchen will give priority to main street over Wall Street, as Trump promised. It remains to be seen.
I was concerned about Mnuchen because of his record of foreclosures at IndyMac, and a recent article in the New York Times about two Jewish brothers who bought up rent-controlled apartment buildings in New York and then did all kinds of terrible things to the apartments to drive the tenants out. This is just recent anecdotal evidence of what has been said for centuries about the hard-heartedness of Jewish property owners. As a Jew, Mnuchen has centuries of suspicion to overcome.
I am already concerned that every chair of the Fed for more than thirty years has been Jewish, and appears to have favored Wall Street in their policies. I am not totally against the Fed like the Rand Paul Libertarian Party, but I want it to be evenhanded in its treatment of Wall Street and Main Street. I worry that Jewish chairs of the Fed will always have closer ties to other Jews on Wall Street than to the ordinary people on Main Street. I understand that Bernie Sanders, the most outspoken critic of Wall Street, is Jewish. Good for him! I supported him until he lost to Hillary.
Landlord brothers
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