ELIZABETH WARREN: Trump's Treasury secretary was the 'Forrest Gump of the financial crisis'
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It appears Elizabeth Warren does not think too highly of President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Steven Mnuchin for Treasury secretary.
In a statement, the Massachusetts senator said Mnuchin was involved in the worst kind of lending practices that led to the financial crisis during his time as head of mortgage lending at Goldman Sachs.
"Steve Mnuchin is the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis — he managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street," Warren said in a statement, according to Politico's Ben White.
"He spent two decades at Goldman Sachs helping the bank peddle the same kind of mortgage products that blew up the economy and sucked down billions in taxpayer bailout money before he moved on to run a bank that was infamous for aggressively foreclosing on families."
Warren's comparison of Mnuchin is to the 1994 Oscar-winning film Forrest Gump, in which Tom Hanks stumbles in and out of historical moments from the 1960s onwards as the eponymous Forrest.
Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years and left the bank in 2002. During his time he oversaw the mortgage-lending department as it delved into such products as credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.
He later founded his own private-equity firm, Dune Capital Management, which in 2009 purchased the distressed-mortgage lender IndyMac, which was renamed OneWest. The firm and Mnuchin have been accused of unfair lending practices including discriminating against minority borrowers and aggressive foreclosures.
"His selection as Treasury secretary should send shivers down the spine of every American who got hit hard by the financial crisis, and is the latest sign that Donald Trump has no intention of draining the swamp and every intention of running Washington to benefit himself and his rich buddies," Warren's statement said.
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