Trump's treasury pick failed to disclose nearly $100m in assets

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...in-financial-disclosure-confirmation-treasury

Steven Mnuchin, the hedge fund millionaire Donald Trump has picked to run the US treasury, failed to disclose nearly $100m in assets to Congress, including his role as a director of offshore funds and close to $1m in art owned by his children.

The error was disclosed hours before Mnuchin was grilled by the Senate finance committee on Thursday over his role at a California bank that foreclosed on thousands of vulnerable borrowers, his attitude to tax havens and the future regulation of the US financial system. (...)

That's the spirit!

Pocket change for these guys. Try harder!

Some idiot was on the radio this morning saying that Trump was a "down-to-earth" guy who could relate to normal people.

This is proof positive that most people are idiots.

Trump and his cohort of wealthy cabinet picks have absolutely nothing in common with the "common man".

Oh come on, hasnt everyone forgotten about $100 million in assets? Seriously for him $100 million is like you finding change in your couch cushion.

I think its proof most talk radio call in shows are staged.

Munchkin is a term in RPGs for people who are overly competitive. Coincidence?

Obama's goldman guy for Treasury committed felonious tax fraud and the republicans breezed him in. Liberal double-standards & hypocrisy never gets old, it's practically synonymous. : )

And (let's pretend) Hillary won - the average guy could relate to her picks? Jesus you folks are in for a really, really rough time.
Okay not you specifically being Canadian and all, but the US Trumpophobes are going to be living in interesting times.

You're forgetting we're the party of elitists. The average guy is average.

Gotta love the reasoning there - The liberals did lots of dirty elitist deeds which we, the noble conservatives, abhorred...which is why we voted for the Hero of the Common Man so that he could do even worse things while we justify him by pointing out how bad the liberals are.

Munchin is a viscous little thug who perfected and dominated the widow foreclosure and is emblematic of the sort of elitist bullshit Trump voters insisted they were voting against.

(so is Wilbur Ross, by the way, but that's a tangent)

I don't think it makes a fig whether or not he screwed up his paperwork, i do think it matters that the little monster routinely destroyed people's lives for much smaller oversights when he was a banker. But no one ever gets defeated for cabinet appointments so all we can do is note the hypocrisy of it and carry on

So, what department is this guy gonna run?

Health, duh

IIRC almost all cabinet members of any modern president are wealthy.

You want a bunch of losers running the departments of the government?

No issue with them being wealthy. I do take exception with them trying to pretend that they have something in common with Joe Public.

Um... yeah. I'm just going to leave that there.

"goldman guy"?

Tim Geithner Goldman Sachs alum.
Apparently only goldman gals/guys can head Treasury.

I didn't know Geithner worked for Goldman Sachs. Have you got a link?

No, you're dead on right, sorry for the bad info, Tim never actually worked for Goldman, just super tight with his mentor Larry Summers and very tight with the pack of other current/ex-goldman studs while he headed the NY fed.

But, responsive to thread topic, and ignoring distractions (that I myself introduced, I know), he *is* a tax cheat, and everyone knew.

Link

"The IMF, as an international agency, did not withhold payroll taxes, but instead reimbursed the usual employer responsibility of these taxes to employees. Geithner received the reimbursements and paid the amounts received to the government, but had not paid the remaining half which would normally have been withheld from his pay. The issue, as well as other errors relating to past deductions and expenses, were noted during a 2006 audit by the Internal Revenue Service[51][52][53][54] Geithner subsequently paid the additional taxes owed."

Yeah maybe he cheated...and maybe it was just a dumb mistake.

So then it shouldn't be a problem to apply this standard to the new person.

After all it was Steven Mnuchin himself that brought the information to light before he was grilled by the US Senate.

It wasn't as if the media found it out well after the man took the job.

I have no problem at all giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I also don't have a problem with him being grilled about it in a confirmation hearing.

I'll rephrase

You want people in the cabinet who have spent the last 10 years or so "running" a marginally successful small business?

You mean like President Trump?

Why do you think he won't release his tax returns?

(Hint: it's because he's wealthy, but nowhere near the billionaire he claims to be. The man has left a countless number of bankrupt and marginally successful businesses in his wake.)

So what's your problem? He does have something in common with the "average guy" then.

Actually, anyone familiar with the IR Code and state and municipal tax laws on more than a passing basis would agree that *everyone* is guilty of tax fraud. With legislative sprawl being what it is, we are all, each and everyone of us in America, guilty of dozens of infractions every week, and tax fraud every year (somewhere, in some context), it's impossible not to be. Breathing is practically illegal.

Just want to be sure because you have a habit of being a passive-aggressive leftist.

Who's a leftist?

You. If you'd open the political closet and step out you'd probably be happier.

Well, the radical right thinks I'm a left of center, and the radical left thinks I'm right of center, so I must be doing something right.