TRUMP NOT FILES - The 'King of Lies' Breaks Promise

"After populist campaign, Trump assembles economic team of elites" PBS NewsHour 11/30/2016

IMHO:  So much for 'draining the swamp.'  Looks more like opening the flood gates.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President-elect Donald Trump's proposed economic team suggests a preference for Wall Street veterans, in a reversal of his campaign promise to surround himself with establishment outsiders.  Judy Woodruff speaks with David Wessel of The Brookings Institution about the “elite” appointments, the controversial Goldman Sachs background of Steven Mnuchin and why Wilbur Ross carries so much influence.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Well, as we've been reporting, the president-elect began fleshing out his economic team today by announcing his choices to run the Departments of Treasury and Commerce.

In doing so, the candidate, who campaigned with a heavy dose of populism, elevated individuals mainly known for their connections to Wall Street and high finance.

David Wessel of the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist to The Wall Street Journal joins me now.

And welcome back to the program.

DAVID WESSEL, The Brookings Institution:  Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, David, fill out this picture a little bit more of who — let's start with Steve Mnuchin.  He's the pick to head the Treasury Department.  What more do we know about him?

DAVID WESSEL:  Well, it's just wonderfully ironic that Donald Trump, who railed against the elite, lambasted Hillary Clinton for giving paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, turned to a guy who not only was at Goldman Sachs for 17 years, but is the son of a Goldman Sachs lifer and has a brother who is at Goldman Sachs.

And so he's going — he went to Yale.  Wilbur Ross went to Yale.  It seems to be a very anti-populist kind of move to pick these rich financiers for these jobs.

(CROSSTALK)

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Excuse me.

So, we're seeing some comments from liberal Democrats today who put out statements saying this is somebody who made a lot of money at Goldman Sachs when the banks were bailed out by the federal government, and then he went on and there was another — he left Goldman, went on and bought a bank, was involved in buying a bank in California.  Tell us about that.

DAVID WESSEL:  Right.

As you know, some of the Democrats, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, think anybody who has ever worked for a bank shouldn't be the treasury secretary.  I think other people feel — I'm among them — that really having some experience on Wall Street might be a good thing for a treasury secretary.

I think the reason Mr. Mnuchin is controversial is not only that he comes from Goldman Sachs, which is kind of the — has been the centerpiece of a lot of criticism, but he made a lot of money buying IndyMac when it was in trouble.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  This is the bank in California.

DAVID WESSEL:  The bank in California.

And then selling it, making a bundle.  And in between, he got a lot of grief because the bank was accused by consumer groups of being very aggressive on foreclosures.  So it looks like he is a guy who profited off of the financial crisis that caused so much harm elsewhere.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Is that clear that he did profit off the financial crisis?

DAVID WESSEL:  No.  But he profited because he bought a bank that was in trouble cheap, fixed it up and sold it.

So, to that extent, he did make money off of the financial crisis.  But he didn't — he comes from the mortgage business, but he was not at Goldman during the worst of the abuses.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "The Courage to Act"

"What it was like to head the Fed during the 2008 meltdown" PBS NewsHour 10/8/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  "In “The Courage to Act,” former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke writes that the global economic collapse of 2008 could have resulted in a crisis akin to 1929 had he, his colleagues and policymakers around the world acted differently.  He joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his memoir of that turbulent time and its aftermath.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  He took on perhaps the most important job in the financial world a year before a global economic collapse.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reflects on that turbulent time in a new book, “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath.”

Ben Bernanke, welcome to the program.

BEN BERNANKE, Former Chairman, Federal Reserve:  Thank you for inviting me.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, you write in this remarkable book that takes us inside not only your life, inside the Fed, a place we don’t hear about very often, that if you and your colleagues had not acted as you did in 2008, that we could have seen something like 1929 again.

Do you really believe that might have happened?

BEN BERNANKE:  Well, nobody can know for sure, but, as an academic, I studied the Great Depression.  I studied how financial panics affect the economy.  And I was very concerned about that, you know, even before Lehman Brothers, even before the financial panic hit its peak.

But after Lehman Brothers, and when the financial panic accelerated, we saw just a tremendous drop-off in the economy, as sharp as the beginning of the Great Depression.  So, I really do believe that it would have been a very, very serious and protracted downturn if the financial crisis had not been arrested.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, the title — in the title is “The Courage to Act.”

But I guess one question is, did you and your colleagues really have a choice?  If things were about to fall apart, what else could you have done?

BEN BERNANKE:  Well, the title refers to policy-makers around the world.

It was a very chaotic situation, a very scary situation, big, high-stakes decisions and in a very uncertain and politically difficult environment.  And people — policy-makers could have been passive.  That was what some commentators were urging, for example, that we should just step back and let the market take care of it.

So it was very difficult to do that.  And I’m glad to have been part of a Fed and Treasury team that took the action that was needed.