Steven Mnuchin's bank once foreclosed on an elderly woman over a 27-cent error
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen a former Goldman Sachs executive, Steven Mnuchin, for treasury secretary. Prominent on Mnuchin's gilt résumé is his founding of a bank called OneWest in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Mnuchin sold OneWest in 2015, but in 2014, before the sale, Politico reports the bank foreclosed on an elderly woman over a 27-cent mistake:
This year, Lofton is contesting the foreclosure with the help of a local nonprofit, Florida Rural Legal Services, which is seeking a jury trial.
OneWest has been accused of harsh and discriminatory lending policies more broadly, but Mnuchin's selection has been hailed by many in Washington as a strong pick for restructuring or even privatizing government-managed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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