Last month Politico reported that Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin’s bank “filed to take a 90-year-old woman’s house after a 27-cent payment error.” Ted Frank writes that four minutes of fact checking would have shown the story wrong. “A. Widow was never foreclosed on and never lost her home. B. It wasn’t Mnuchin’s bank that brought the suit….The story on its face made no sense. No court permits that kind of foreclosure, and banks lose money on the deal.” The story was widely spread in the media (CNN, Vanity Fair, The Hill) and popped up again at Mnuchin’s confirmation hearing for Treasury secretary.
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Come on Ted! You are not going to let a little thing like facts get in the way of an “Evil Banker” story. 🙂
It’s the lefts alternative facts!
So I’ve read all this and I’m still seeing a a couple essential parts of the story are true, according to Frank’s own telling:
* Mnuchin’s bank, while Mnuchin was running it, sued a 90-year-old woman totally by mistake in 2014 over “a breach in mortgage terms.” She had to get a lawyer and defend herself before the bank dismissed the suit.
* Her bank, after it was sold but while Mnuchin was on the board, hires lawyers to sue her again a year later over $0.27, an error caused by a confusing bill (who writes $.3 when they mean 30 cents?)
I would agree none of that particularly falls on Mnuchin personally, who undoubtedly had no idea about the first lawsuit, let alone the second one when he wasn’t even running the bank anymore. To the extent that Politico blames him personally, that’s completely inaccurate. To the extent that Politico botches the timeline and refuses to correct their story, that’s also completely inaccurate and appalling.
To say that “No court permits that kind of foreclosure, and banks lose money on the deal” ignores the fact that the bank filed it anyway, forcing a 90-year-old woman to once again get legal aid to fight the bank’s mistake and keep her home. That the bank would do so out of stupidity rather than a pure profit motive is perhaps even worse.
But clearly Mnuchin is in some way responsible for creating an environment in which his business would sue a homeowner twice in a year (once while he was in charge, once after the merger) over practically nothing. Clearly nobody was reviewing these lawsuits and nobody cared about the results. Does that mean Mnuchin shouldn’t be confirmed as Treasury Secretary? Not necessarily. But in the same way Wells Fargo execs are deemed responsible for overseeing employees who created fake accounts, doesn’t Mnuchin bear some responsibility for overseeing employees who went after a woman’s home in such a ridiculous fashion.
Your comment ignores that fact that not only did the court not allow the foreclosure, The woman has a counter claim against the bank which the bank has offered to pay her to settle. The only thing left to be decided is how much it’s going to cost the bank.,
Well sure, but that doesn’t negate the fact they filed to foreclose in the first place. If I catch you trying to rob my house and you wind up being imprisoned and paying me restitution for the things you broke, it still doesn’t erase the fact that you were trying to rob my house.
The problem is that they filed to foreclose over 27 cents, not that they didn’t actually complete the process. I do think the Politico article is very sloppy on that fact, pointing out in one place that the bank (which had already merged at that point) “filed to take” the house but elsewhere saying “the bank foreclosed” (also messing up the timeline), without being clear that the bank filed but didn’t ultimately take the house.
Another important point missed is that Mnuchin was only a member of the board of directors. The BOD sets high level policy, budgets, salaries for executive level positions, and bonuses. However, the BOD has little to no control over the day to day operations of the company.
It’s doubtful that the BOD was even aware of the filing before it became clear that she was going to win her counter claim and the bank was going to have to pay her money.
Neither lawsuit was “over nothing.” HUD has very strict regulations requiring rapid foreclosure for the breaches the bank reasonably believed the homeowner committed. The first lawsuit over residency was resolved without lawyers in 28 days. 2014 and 2016 are not “within a year.”
This episode, to the extent that it’s true or may be charged to Mnuchin’s responsibility should count against his suitability to head the Treasury Department to the same degree that a nominee’s personal failure to pay his due and owing federal income taxes would be/was.
Which it isn’t very. There is a tiny kernel of truth behind it, but it’s just that, tiny.
Which is approximately zero.
Well beyond any doubt, yet that doesn’t refute the reality they documented to dispossess in any case. On the off chance that I find you attempting to victimize my home and you end up being detained and paying me compensation for the things you broke, despite everything it doesn’t delete the way that you were attempting to ransack my home.
1. The story that was circulated was that they did foreclose, not that they attempted to foreclose. Not the same thing.
2. Those pushing the story were deliberately attempting to put responsibility for the foreclosure on Mnuchin. The reality is, it is quite unlikely that anyone on the BOD was aware of the attempt to foreclose until after it went south and the bank was facing a counter claim on which they would almost certainly lose.
A couple of comments compared the incident to someone robbing their home. It is not the same thing. The incident with the home was a billing error, the act of robbery is a conscious decision. You can’t compare restitution for a crime to settling a claim over a mistake. Putting that all aside, it never actually happened, her home was never foreclosed on, she still lives there,and Mnuchin had nothing to do with it in the first place.