Friday, June 26, 2020

PRESIDENT FUCK UP TRUMP HANDS $1.4 BILLION IN RELIEF PAYMENTS TO THE DEAD


“During his time running mortgage lender OneWest, which he bought with a group of investors for pennies on the dollar before selling it for a personal profit of many millions, Steven Mnuchin & Co. foreclosed on more than 36,000 homeowners. Because (1) that’s a lot of people kicked out of a lot houses and (2) everyone loves a good nickname, Mnuchin has earned the moniker, in some circles, “Foreclosure King,” or ”Foreclosure King of California,” if you’re not one for brevity.” BESS LEVIN

1.1 Million Dead People Got Coronavirus Relief Payments Totaling $1.4 Billion

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BREITBART NEWS
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Nearly 1.1 million coronavirus relief payments totaling some $1.4 billion went to dead people, a government watchdog reported Thursday. Legal and political issues hang over the misdirected taxpayer funds, the latest example of errors in massive aid being dispensed at crisis speed.
As of May 31, about 160 million so-called economic impact payments totaling $269 billion were sent to taxpayers as part of the $2.4 trillion coronavirus relief package enacted in March. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, cited the number of erroneous payments to deceased taxpayers in its report on the government programs.
The payments to the dead account for a tiny fraction of the total sent out, less than seventh-tenths of a percentage point. Payments to deceased and other errors were inevitable because of the speed with which the government moved to deliver money to U.S. households to ameliorate the economic harm from the coronavirus and shutdowns.
The government relied on past tax filings to determine who would receive payments and some of those would have been from taxpayers who subsequently died.
Ernie Tedeschi, a former Obama administration Treasury Department official, described this as “a fairly low error rate.”


Even payments to the dead can accomplish to goal of providing support to the economy if they are spent by widows, widowers, or other heirs. Some of those who got the funds were likely in need of additional income because they had lost a household breadwinner or still had fixed expenses such a mortgage or car payment incurred before the passing of the family member. A widow, for example, might still be owe mortgage payments on a couple’s house even though she may have lost the income generated by her deceased spouse.
Despite the remarkably small amount of misspent funds, opponents of the Trump administration were quick to raise the alarm. The Washington Post referred, without evidence, to the tiny fraction of payments that went to the dead as “the astonishing scope of the problem.” Congressional Democrats complained, falsely, that the payments to the dead resulted from a lack of transparency.
While the government has asked survivors to return the money, it’s not clear they have to.
It also may be a politically sensitive gambit for the Treasury Department to aggressively seek to claw back the money, especially because some recipients may have died in the early months of this year from COVID-19.
When billions in aid are rushed out the door in a crisis, “these are the kinds of things that happen,” said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of advocacy group Public Citizen.
Gilbert acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue. But, she added, “it’s a big number, particularly at this moment when our economy is in free-fall. It’s a large amount of taxpayer money that’s not doing what it was intended to do.”
The errors occurred mainly because of a lag in reporting data on who is deceased. It’s a lapse that tax experts say is almost inevitable.
The revelation of more than $1 billion in public money erroneously paid out shines a light on the part of the government’s massive relief program with which most ordinary Americans are most familiar. It follows disclosures that several major restaurant chains and other publicly traded companies had received emergency loans under the $670 billion program for the nation’s struggling small businesses.
“GAO found that more than $1 trillion in taxpayer funds have already been obligated — including more than $1 billion to deceased individuals — with little transparency into how that money is being spent,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.
Bloomberg News anchor Joe Weisenthal said the focus on the errant payments missed the point and could be economically harmful.



The IRS didn’t use death records to prevent payments to deceased individuals for the first three batches of payments because of the legal interpretation the agency was operating under, the GAO report says.
The IRS asked in May for the money back from the deceased taxpayers’ survivors. Some legal experts have said the government may not have the legal authority to require that it be returned.
Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and the IRS didn’t return requests for comment Thursday on the report. Treasury pointed to its current guidance, indicating that the government’s position remains that the survivors must return the money to the IRS.
The payments were by paper check, direct deposit or debit card. All adults earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income annually were entitled to $1,200; that amount steadily declined for those earning more and phased out for people earning over $99,000. Up to $500 per qualifying child also was paid.
Former Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has said there is nothing in the law prohibiting payments from going to the deceased. Nor is there anything in the law requiring people to return the payments. She notes that the language used on the IRS website does not say that returning the payments is required by law.
The relief payments were made to taxpayers based on the information filed on their 2019 or 2018 taxes. But it is considered a rebate on 2020 taxes. The government used the previous tax forms to help speed along payments to the public to offset some of the economic devastation from the coronavirus pandemic.
But some people who filed those taxes may no longer be alive. Those payments are sent to an heir or executor of their estate. If the payment is based off a final tax return completed after their death, an economic impact payment check may even denote, next to that person’s name, that the individual is deceased.
“I think the IRS will do little or nothing to pursue collection of these payments,” Keith Fogg, clinical professor at Harvard and an expert in tax law, said Thursday. “The cheapest way for the IRS to collect is offset of a future refund. That avenue will not exist for these taxpayers. I don’t think the IRS will take the somewhat difficult steps to pursue the heirs for this amount of money.”
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–The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Steve Mnuchin, foreclosure king, now runs your US Treasury

BY MARK PLOTKIN
Where do they find these people? Appointed by the president as Cabinet members, many have past lives and records that should immediately disqualify them for any high office.
Someone who has not been given the attention he so richly deserves is Steven Mnuchin, the new secretary of the Treasury.
Only one Democratic senator voted for him: Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Every other Democratic senator voted a resounding "no."
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said the following of Mnuchin: "His complicity in the 2008 financial crisis raises serious doubts."
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) went further: "He was part of the cadre of corporate raiders that brought our economy to its knees."
Of the astute businessman's failure to disclose $100 million in an overseas tax haven, Menendez added: "One does not go and create offshore entities at the end of the day other than to avoid, in some form or fashion, the tax laws of the United States. That's pretty simple."
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) did not hesitate to call Mnuchin "greedy" and "unethical." She backed it up with these blunt words: "Whether illegally foreclosing on thousands of families, skirting the law with offshore tax havens or helping design tactics that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, Steve Mnuchin made a career — and millions of dollars — pioneering increasingly deceptive and predatory ways to rob hardworking Americans of their savings and homes." 
Seemingly, Mnuchin was another one of President Trump's campaign thank-yous. He was one of the very few corporate executives who would actually step forward and be seen raising money for Trump, even going so far as becoming the campaign's national finance chair.
Before that, though, Mnuchin distinguished himself by making out like a bandit during the worst financial crisis our country has faced since the Great Depression.
This is all well-documented by David Dayen, author of "Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud." In an exhaustive article in The Nation, Dayen chronicles how Mnuchin got fabulously rich while hundreds of thousands lost their homes.
In 2008, Mnuchin made a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). He and his investment group bought a predatory lender named Indy Mac, renaming it "OneWest." They then started foreclosing on homeowners.
While doing that, he "harvested fees for appraisals and inspections and late payments, and got protected by a federal backstop. The FDIC lost $13 billion on Indy Mac; Mnuchin and company made $3 billion in profits."
To make this tidy sum for himself, Mnuchin used something called "servicer-driven defaults." This practice entailed "telling homeowners they must miss payments to get help, and when they do, [the banks] move to foreclose."
The other devious ploy is something called "dual tracking." This is "where servicers negotiate modifications and pursue foreclosures at the same time."
If that were not enough, Dayen cites "a decided racial component. 68 percent of OneWest 36,000 plus foreclosures in California were in non-white areas." In addition, "OneWest was a market leader in foreclosing on the elderly: its subsidiary Financial Freedom carried out a disproportionate number of reverse mortgage foreclosures, which target seniors to suck out their home equity."
Finally, to top it off, OneWest engaged in thousands of "robo signings." This was the odious and fraudulent practice of signing sworn affidavits while not reviewing the documents. Some were signed at "30 seconds a clip." This practice was done "750 times a week on eventually 36,000 plus loans."
Dayen claims that "millions of homeowners were thrown out of their homes based on false documents."
So the long and short of this is that one Steven Mnuchin, who led and sanctioned these horrible business practices, is rewarded with a position that is fifth in the presidential line of succession.
Couldn't Trump find someone who didn't have such a record? Someone who didn't benefit from the misery of others?
The president has demonstrated once again that he so sorely lacks good judgment, and, contrary to his claims, has no apparent skill in picking talented or qualified people to serve our country.
Mark Plotkin is a contributor to the BBC on American politics and a columnist for The Georgetowner. Previously, he was the political analyst for WAMU-FM, Washington's NPR affiliate, and later became the political analyst for WTOP-FM, Washington's all-news radio station. He is a winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing.

Here's Why Treasury Nominee Steve Mnuchin Has Been Called the 'Foreclosure King'

Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, is testifying in a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. The banker, Hollywood producer, and former Goldman Sachs partner is expected to be grilled on a wide range of topics.
But one subject that’s bound to come up is particularly likely to resonate with everyday Americans: How many people lost their homes unfairly due to Mnuchin’s actions when he was CEO of a bank known as a “Foreclosure Machine”?
In late 2008, while the global economy was collapsing, Mnuchin and some partners purchased the failing bank IndyMac and turned it into OneWest, which grew into the largest bank in Southern California. OneWest developed a reputation as a “Foreclosure Machine,” and Mnuchin himself has been dubbed the “Foreclosure King.”
Earlier this month, a 2013 memo from the California attorney general’s office was leaked indicating that OneWest allegedly engaged in “widespread misconduct” to boost foreclosures, including the backdating of mortgage documents. In light of the memo, the nonprofit watchdog Campaign for Accountability called on the Department of Justice to investigate OneWest for “using potentially illegal tactics to foreclose on as many as 80,000 California homes.”
Millions of foreclosures took place in the aftermath of the Great Recession, but critics say that OneWest stood out compared to other lenders with aggressive tactics and a particularly high foreclosure rate. A ProPublica report released after Mnuchin was nominated to lead the Treasury said that OneWest “was responsible for 16,200 foreclosures on government-backed reverse mortgages, or 39 percent of all foreclosures nationwide, from 2009 through late 2014, even though it only serviced about 17 percent of the loans.”
“Foreclosures happen in an economic crisis. But OneWest was different. It quickly gained a reputation as a foreclosure machine,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said during a recent Senate forum. “Even when compared to the other financial institutions that aggressively and illegally tossed families out of the houses, OneWest was notorious for its belligerence and for its cruelty.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that OneWest Bank started foreclosure proceedings on some 137,000 homes nationwide between early 2009 and the middle of 2015, but pointed out that OneWest accounted for only 1.8% of all foreclosure starts during that period. What’s more, data shows that foreclosures were spiking at subprime giant IndyMac even before Mnuchin and his partners bought the bank, and that a large percentage of the mortgages they acquired were hopeless.
Even so, there is evidence that OneWest preferred simple foreclosures rather than modifying loans to help people keep their homes, again per the Journal:
In a 2011 letter to the FDIC, other regulators and lawmakers, people who said they worked at OneWest claimed it “actually makes more money by foreclosing than they would if they allow loan modification.” The letter said OneWest’s loan-modification staff “routinely shreds loan modification applications” and lies to homeowners when they call OneWest.
Mnuchin’s would-be boss, Donald Trump, also has a history of welcoming foreclosures and real estate market collapses. During the presidential campaign, a segment from a 2006 audiobook from Trump University came to light in which Trump said, “I sort of hope” there’s a real estate crash because “if there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know you can make a lot of money.” (Trump University, a for-profit real estate education venture widely decried as a scam, went out of business and was sued by former students and the New York Attorney General. Soon after winning the election, Trump agreed to pay a $25 million settlement.)
In prepared remarks read at the Senate Finance hearing on Thursday, Mnuchin defended his role at OneWest, claiming that the bank modified loans to help 100,000 clients keep their homes. “I have been maligned as taking advantage of others’ hardships in order to earn a buck,” said Mnuchin, whose net worth has been estimated at about $400 million. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Mnuchin argued against the idea that he “ran a ‘foreclosure machine,’” during the hearing. “This is not true. On the contrary, I was committed to loan modifications intended to stop foreclosures. I ran a ‘loan modification machine.’”

“FORECLOSURE KING” STEVEN MNUCHIN DOESN’T APPRECIATE HIS TOTALLY ACCURATE NICKNAME

The nominee for Treasury secretary wants to know why no one ever brings up all the good stuff he did at OneWest.
BY BESS LEVIN
JANUARY 18, 2017
BY MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS.
During his time running mortgage lender OneWest, which he bought with a group of investors for pennies on the dollar before selling it for a personal profit of many millions, Steven Mnuchin & Co. foreclosed on more than 36,000 homeowners. Because (1) that’s a lot of people kicked out of a lot houses and (2) everyone loves a good nickname, Mnuchin has earned the moniker, in some circles, “Foreclosure King,” or ”Foreclosure King of California,” if you’re not one for brevity.
And if Mnuchin, whom Donald Trump has nominated to run the Treasury Department, can be honest? It really pisses him off, as do all the other criticisms that have been lobbed in his direction since Trump put him up for the job. That includes, but is not limited to, that leaked memo from the California attorney general’s office alleging that OneWest backdated documents so they could push more foreclosures through. Not to mention the fact that no one has talked about the great, dare he say, saintly work he did running the bank.
Luckily, Mnuchin will have a platform tomorrow during his Senate confirmation hearing to get these gripes off his chest:


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