Trump’s Economic Team Is a Who’s Who of What’s Wrong
By Richard Eskow for the Campaign for America's Future Blog
“I hear America singing,” Walt Whitman
wrote, “the varied carols I hear.” Donald Trump hears America singing, too. But
where Whitman heard men and women, masons and carpenters, Trump hears only the
unvarying monotone of rich white males like himself.
Trump’s
tone-deafness was in full effect last week, when he announced his team of economic
advisers in
advance of what is being billed as “a major economic address” in Detroit on
Monday.
Trump’s team
isn’t just monochromatic and male. At least four, and perhaps as many six, of
the men are billionaires.
They range in age from 50 to 74 – or, from “younger old white guy” to “older
old white guy.”
Five team
members are named Steve – which means that eight of them are not. For
diversity, that will have to do.
There are only
two economists on the team – and one of them believes in the flat tax.
But hedge funds
are represented. So is fracking. And tobacco. And guns. And banking. And steel.
And there’s the guy who mismanaged Chrysler before it was rescued by a
government intervention.
Three team
members – economist Peter Navarro, steel magnate Dan DiMicco and real estate
investor Thomas Barrack Jr. – have criticized the bad “trade” deals supported
by both major parties over the last 25 years. That’s a start, I suppose. But
it’s not enough, not by a long shot.
(As for Barrack,
he says he raised $32
million for a Trump super PAC from only four donors. He also hosted a
Trump fundraiser for $25,000 a ticket – or $100,000 per couple. So much for
“the candidate who can’t be bought because he doesn’t need the money.”)
Who’s not
represented on Trump’s economic team? Working people. Women. Minorities. The
middle class.
There are no
union leaders or labor economists to explain why higher wages and a more
unionized workforce leads to broader growth prosperity. There’s nobody who’s
fighting to close the gender pay gap, or to resist the economic predation that
has decimated minority communities.
There’s no one who understands the
devastating impact that environmental destruction is having on our economy, as
well as on our planet and on our bodies.
So who are these
men? Old caper movies introduce their players with a montage of them living
their daily lives. Here, then, is the Trump Team montage:
Andrew
Beal, banker: Beal made his
billions buying up distressed properties, sometimes from government agencies.
He reportedly plays rough at collection time. “Mr. Beal acknowledges that some
debt collectors engaged by his banks may have pushed too hard,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.
Beal likes to
play high-stakes poker. He is known for offering risky loans –
and because he owns a bank, the US government insures them.
Speaking of
government, we forgot to mention: this federally insured tycoon is a
libertarian.
Steve
Feinberg, financier: Feinberg runs Cerberus Capital
Management, which bought Chrysler in 2007 with some other investors
and promised to restore it to profitability. Instead they declared bankruptcy
and accepted federal bailout money for Chrysler Financial.
Cerberus also
purchased a majority share of GMAC in 2006 and accepted federal bailout money
for it, too (after the Fed bent the rules and declared it a bank holding
company).
Then there are
the guns. Cerberus purchased Bushmaster Firearms International, Remington Arms,
and several other firearms companies, and merged them all into an entity called
the “Freedom Group.”
It took an investor revolt to make Cerberus promise to
unload these holdings after Bushmaster’s AR-15 was used to kill a number of
small children in the Sandy Hook shootings. (It later reneged, saying
it couldn’t find a buyer.)
Cerberus also
promised to stay out of the gun debate, but two years after Sandy Hook its
executives were funding anti-gun
control ads – in Connecticut, where the kindergarten massacre
occurred.
Feinberg is a major Republican
donor. He now says he regrets naming his firm for the three-headed
dog that guards the gates of hell.
Steven
Mnuchin, financier/film producer: Mnuchin’s investment group “bailed out” a housing
lender in California and renamed it OneWest. OneWest, where Mnuchin became CEO,
has been strongly criticized for its foreclosure practices.
The California
Reinvestment Coalition has called on authorities to
investigate OneWest’s apparent pattern of racial discrimination in
foreclosures. It also cited its abusive “foreclosures of widows,” which makes
it morally indistinguishable from countless silent-movie villains.
On the plus
side, Mnuchin was an executive producer on “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
Harold
Hamm, Oklahoma oil billionaire: Hamm is, among other things, a fracker with
extensive holdings in the Bakken Formation.
Bloomberg News reports
that Hamm attempted to have some earthquake researchers fired from the
University of Oklahoma, where he’s a major donor, because they were
investigating the connection between the oil and gas industry and Oklahoma’s
“nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes.”
Hamm, who is reportedly worth $11.3 billion, was cited as one
of the executives urging Mitt Romney to turn federal lands over to states for
oil and gas exploitation.
Believe it or
not, this fracker is reportedly under consideration for the job of Energy Secretary in
a Trump Administration.
John
Paulson, hedge funder: Paulson made
billions using credit default swaps to bet against subprime mortgages in the
run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. That’s no crime, and Paulson guessed right
– although it did lead to labels like “the hedge funder who
bet against America.”
Paulson’s
actions reinforce the idea that today’s hedge funds are economically harmful
entities. It’s fine for an airline to hedge against the price of oil to protect
its bottom line. But it’s hard to see how the bets made by today’s hedge funds
help the economy. They are destructive when they lead to market manipulation or
the entrapment of unwary investors.
Speaking of
which: Paulson went to Goldman Sachs in 2006 and said he wanted to bet against
subprime mortgages. Goldman needed a buyer for those investments, which were
then packaged as a “collateralized debt obligation” or “CDO” called “Abacus.”
It did not reveal that Paulson had shorted them by more than $1 billion.
(Summaries here and here.)
Goldman Sachs
paid more than half a
billion dollars ($550 million) to settle the case.
Paulson, who was not accused of wrongdoing, made about $1 billion on the deal.
(He’s fallen on harder times lately,
although presumably not the “foreclosed widow” kind of hard times.)
“Some investors
later would argue that Mr. Paulson’s actions indirectly led to the creation of
additional dangerous CDO investments,” The Wall Street Journal reported, “resulting
in billions of dollars of additional losses for those who owned the CDO
slices.”
That’s a
sensible interpretation. Meanwhile, Americans were left wondering what this
kind of activity does for them or the economy as a whole – or why their
economic future should be entrusted to someone with this sort of background.
These are the
architects of the economy Trump would create: a fracker for Energy Secretary,
harmful speculators in key advisory roles, and an economy controlled by people
who foreclose on widows and profit from gun violence.
The America
Trump describes is a dark dystopia, competitive and divided and brutal. Now
he’s assembled a team that could make that nightmare a reality. We thought
“Fury Road” was just a movie. Who knew it was a presidential platform, too?
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a senior fellow
at Campaign for America's Future.