Trump railed against Goldman Sachs and CEOs, fighting for the working class. Really?
For treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, King of Foreclosures. He spent 17 years as a partner at Goldman Sachs, founded Dune Capital Management and was a CEO of Soros Fund Management. In 2009, Mnuchin bought the failed housing lender IndyMac for $1.6 billion, renaming it OneWest. It has been repeatedly sued.
A New York judge once penalized OneWest for its “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive” actions in dealing with distressed mortgages. Several courts issued restraining orders and injunctions to prevent foreclosures.
For commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross. He spent 24 years at Rothschild Inc., a British multinational investment banking firm. After that, he was involved with automobiles, movies, steel, coal, textiles and more.
In 2005, Ross was supposed to be negotiating to “save Pennsylvania steel” but sold the Richfield, Ohio-based International Steel Group to Mittal Steel in Europe for $4.5 billion. Ross’s International Coal Group was set up to be free of worker-friendly labor unions, health care coverage and pensions. ICG was sued repeatedly.
After the 2006 Sago Coal Mine explosion, newspapers reported Ross was “involved with the company that owned the West Virginia mine where 12 miners perished – and he knew all about its safety problems.”
The mine had 12 roof collapses in 2005 alone, and U.S. Department of Labor data showed 208 citations for safety violations in that same period, including 21 times for build-up of toxic gasses. Despite these figures, Ross wouldn’t shut down the mine.
Trump nation.
JAMES VEVERKA
Tilton