Steven Mnuchin nominated for US treasury secretary, by Rupert Neate.
Donald Trump has nominated Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs banker-turned-Hollywood movie financier with no government experience, as US Treasury secretary.
Mnuchin, a multimillionaire who was dubbed a “foreclosure king” for buying up distressed mortgages and evicting thousands of homeowners during the financial crisis, immediately announced he would oversee “the largest tax change since Reagan” and said his “No 1 priority is tax reform”.
As well as cutting personal taxes, Mnuchin said the US corporate tax rate would be reduced from 35% to 15%. “By cutting corporate taxes, we’re going to create huge economic growth and we’ll have huge personal income,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “We’re going to get to 15% and bring a lot of cash back into the US.”
Mnuchin said “taxes are way too complicated” and people spend “way too much time worrying about ways to get them lower”. He claimed that the proposed tax cuts would allow the US economy to achieve an annual growth rate of 3% to 4%. …
Mnuchin will become the first career banker to take on the high-powered post since former Goldman chief executive Hank Paulson was appointed by George W Bush in 2006 and ran the US Treasury during the 2007-08 financial crisis.
There Will Be Swamp – Steve Mnuchin Confirms Treasury Secretary Nod, by Michael Krieger, who is critical of Mnuchin’s banking career.
While I’m not a Dodd-Frank fan, it’s not because it was too harsh, but because it didn’t really do much of anything. It was the typical neoliberal bait and switch, designed to look tough for public consumption, while merely making tweaks around the edges of a financial system that requires systemic, paradigm level change.
Trump’s support of repealing Dodd-Frank tells you all you need to know. A Trump Presidency will see Wall Street felons who should be in prison, running as wild and free as ever.
He will be the same thing to distressed working class whites that Obama was to the black community. A fake messiah and a shyster. …
The fact that Steve Mnuchin was a Goldman Sachs partner is the least of my concerns when it comes to the man. Indeed, if someone wanted to create a playing card deck of sleazy Wall Street financial crisis opportunists, it’d be hard not to include Steve Mnuchin.
Steve Mnuchin was Trump’s national finance chairman during his campaign, and first major staff selection since securing the Republican nomination:
With over 30 years of experience at the top levels of finance, Mnuchin was present for every recent major banking innovation, including those that brought the country to the brink of economic collapse.
Mnuchin’s presence in the campaign reveals how the qualities Trump loyalists projected on their hero don’t measure up to the truth. They have venerated him throughout the Republican primary for rejecting the dirty business of pay-to-play politics, and for populist vows to protect the ordinary worker. But in selecting Mnuchin, not only has Trump submitted to the realities of presidential campaign finance; he’s chosen one of the most notorious bankers in America to carry it out.
Steve Mnuchin says there will be ‘no absolute tax cut for the upper class’, by CNBC.
President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts will primarily serve the middle class and will not include an absolute tax cut for the wealthy, Steven Mnuchin told CNBC on Wednesday …
“Any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class,” Mnuchin said in an interview on “Squawk Box.”
