Mark Patricks – As incoming President Donald Trump takes office, many Democrats are focused on attempting to spike the confirmations of appointees to his cabinet. One pick in particular who will likely not have smooth sailing in Senate confirmation hearings is Treasury Secretary pick Steve Mnuchin.
Mnuchin’s alleged role in the 2008 collapse of California mortgage lender IndyMac has brought the threat of public scrutiny from notoriously liberal Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Warren has created a page on the United States Senate website naming Mnuchin a “foreclosure king” alleging he threw thousands of homeowners out into the street when his company bought IndyMac in 2009.
But evidence appears to show that the real cause of IndyMac’s collapse was actually none other than Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. The overheated real estate bubble of 2008 had begun to pop as investors and financial institutions realized that mortgage-backed securities were actually far less secure than their sellers had claimed, and real estate speculation nationwide started to crash.
On June 26, 2008, Schumer gave a copy of a letter he had sent to banking regulators to reporters, in which Schumer wrote he was “concerned that IndyMac’s financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers.”