They Made a Killing on the Mortgage Crisis. Now They Run Trump's America.
Some of the same men who profited big-time off of predatory foreclosures during the Great Recession are now in Trumps inner circle. They serve in his cabinet and count themselves among his best friends.
Reveals Senior Reporter Aaron Glantz has spent a decade untangling the threads of the mortgage crisis that triggered the 2008 crashand its aftermath. He chronicles the results of his reporting in his recent book, Homewreckers, which profiles a cadre of men who made a killing during the housing crisis thanks to federal tax deductions and aggressive foreclosures.
Glantz joined the host of the Mother Jones Podcast Jamilah King for this weeks episode to look at how, in 2019, some of the greatest profiteersincluding Steven Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Thomas J. Barrack, Jr., and Steve Schwarzmanare now in positions of enormous power to influence national housing policies as members of Trumps inner circle.
The book opens in 2008, when 8 million homes were foreclosed on and flooded the market at steeply discounted rates. For the next eight years, from 2008 to 2016, home ownership continued to drop, hitting the lowest rate in 50 years.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/mother-jones-podcast-aaron-glantz-reveal-homewreckers-book-swamp-trump-housing/