This could go in so many threads, crony governmentism, rigged economy, housing crash, corruption, white collar crime etc, but the most immediate relevance is his affiliation with the Clintons. Why do you suppose that is so? When I bought foreclosures, I was limited by the amount of money I had to invest. When Friends of Hillary do it, free money, no limits. Stories like this conflate resentment for others' success with all the corruption that makes some of it possible. There is nothing like watching a liberal look out for the little guy - he caused foreclosures, bought foreclosures, then refuses to rent to anyone who had a foreclosure.
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The Guy Who Screwed America’s Economy Hearts Hillary Clinton
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/26/the-guy-who-screwed-america-s-economy-hearts-hillary-clinton.htmlThe man behind Goldman Sachs’s infamous bets on the housing collapse now buys foreclosed homes and rents them out—but not to anyone convicted of a financial crime. He’s also a big Clinton donor.
Wall Street is buying Main Street one foreclosed home at a time.
The houses—more than 200,000 of them—are then rented to folks who continue to struggle in the aftermath of a near financial collapse in 2008.
And one of the leading figures in Wall Street’s scavenging of the wreckage created by Wall Street is also a big-time backer of Hillary Clinton.
His name is Donald Mullen, and he was once the global head of credit at Goldman Sachs. He was credited with devising the infamous “big short,” by which the firm bet bigger than big that the housing market would collapse even as it was urging customers to invest in it.
“Sounds like we will make some serious money,” he famously emailed colleagues in 2007, at early signs of the impending implosion.
Mullen left Goldman Sachs in 2012 and made some more serious money by becoming one of a number of Wall Streeters who are acquiring and leasing thousands of foreclosed homes.
Mullen embarked on this new endeavor with Curt Schade, formerly a managing director at Bear Stearns, which failed at the start of the financial crisis. Mullen and Schade received a $400 million credit line from Deutsche Bank, which survived thanks to billions of dollars in direct and indirect financial support from the government.
The new firm came to be called Progress Residential. The name takes on an added resonance when you visit the website of the major pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action, to which Mullen contributed $100,000 in June. You are welcomed by a picture of a smiling, waving Hillary Clinton and a message:
“The story of America is one of hard-fought, hard-won progress. And it continues today.”
The
$100,000 to the pro-Clinton super PAC was noted by OpenSecrets.org and reported by various news outlets. The Washington Post has further reported that
Mullen is one of 146 people who have contributed to all six of the federal races entered by either Hillary or Bill Clinton.
What has not been reported are some supreme ironies arising not so much from the money Mullen hands out but in the money he rakes in. Consider the “Rental Qualification Criteria” that a prospective tenant must pass before being granted a lease to one of the foreclosed homes that Progress Residential has acquired.
Applicants must document monthly household income of at least three times the monthly rent. Income and “credit worthiness” (PDF) are then “entered into an application scoring model to determine rental eligibility.”
But that is not all. You must also attest that you have never been convicted of any one of various felonies, including these:
“Financial crimes.”
The ban in this category applies for 10 years for those convicted of a felony, three years for a misdemeanor.
A guy who has been caught passing a bad check can forget renting one of Mullen’s houses for a decade.
That by
the onetime credit chief at Goldman Sachs, which this month reached a $5.06 billion settlement with the government arising from allegations that the bank knowingly sold iffy mortgages to unsuspecting customers even as it was betting against them via Mullen’s big short.In announcing the deal, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Benjamin Mizer, said, “Today’s settlement is another example of the department’s resolve to hold accountable those whose illegal conduct resulted in the financial crisis of 2008.”
Sure.
If there was illegal conduct, how come nobody was arrested?In truth, the settlement was another example of the department’s failure to hold any individuals accountable for breaking the law.
Too big to jail.
To be completely fair to Mullen, the Goldman emails show that he at one point worried “about the representations we may be making to clients.”
But that does not seem to have stopped him from playing a major role in what followed, which is to say upending the lives of millions of people.
And he refuses to rent not only to those who have committed financial crimes but also to those who have been evicted within the past seven years.
In other words, a family could be evicted when its home is foreclosed, watch Mullen buy the house, and then find itself barred from renting any of his thousands of properties because they had been evicted.
Also barred from renting are those who have been incarcerated for a felony of any kind within the past five years; those jailed for a misdemeanor have to wait three years.
Those who survived the financial collapse without being evicted or going bankrupt or committing a crime for which Main Street if not Wall Street folks are jailed might then actually get a lease. (more at link)
