Documents show that state prosecutors and Treasury Department regulators believed Steve Mnuchin’s bank was mishandling foreclosures at the height of the financial crisis.

Alexia Fernández Campbell

• Mnuchin won’t circumvent Senate process with reply letter
• His Treasury chief nomination is subject to Senate approval

Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin has declined to answer questions from a Democratic senator about his views on financial regulations, sanctions and his time as head of a bank accused of unfair foreclosure practices.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the banking committee, sent a letter on Dec. 21 asking Mnuchin to detail his position by Jan. 6 on issues that are under the committee’s purview, including fair lending laws and foreclosure-prevention programs. Mnuchin doesn’t plan to respond to the senator in writing, though several weeks ago he requested a meeting with Brown, who hasn’t yet accepted, according to Mnuchin’s spokeswoman Tara Bradshaw.

“Mnuchin will work with Senator Brown within the protocol of the finance committee — and will not be providing written answers in advance of a deadline yet…

Mnuchin is a highly paid gopher. He has made his money not by his business acumen but by his willingness to do anything for money. That included putting himself on the front line of one piece of the greatest economic crime in human history.

Nominating him for Treasury Secretary is a direct slap in the face of tens of millions of Americans who suffered grievous losses as a proximate result of illegal activities by the Wall Street banks. He will only do what his bank clients tell him to do. He will only say what they want him to say.

From http://yubanet.com/california/memo-shows-evidence-of-illegal-foreclosure-practices-at-onewest-bank-while-steven-mnuchin-was-ceo/

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/ …

By David Dayen

ONEWEST BANK, WHICH Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, ran from 2009 to 2015, repeatedly broke California’s foreclosure laws during that period, according to a previously undisclosed 2013 memo from top prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office.

The memo obtained by The Intercept alleges that OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.

In the memo, the leaders of the state attorney general’s Consumer Law Section said they had “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct” in a yearlong investigation. In a detailed 22-page request, they identified over a thousand legal violations in the small subsection of OneWest loans they were able to examine, and they recommended that Attorney General Kamala Harris file a civil enforcement action against the Pasadena-based bank. They even wrote up a sample legal complaint

President-elect Donald Trump believes secure communications should be handwritten and delivered through couriers, he said Saturday while celebrating the new year at his Florida mansion.

The tweeting Luddite — who rarely sends emails — fears no computer is immune to hack attacks and suggested rolling back modern communications to a middleman service dating back to ancient Rome.

“If you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old fashioned way because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Trump told pool reporters when asked about the role of cyber security in his upcoming administration.

“You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier,” he added before entering the Mar-a-Lago resort party alongside his wife, Melania Trump.

Read on.

New York to Wells Fargo: fuhgeddaboudit!

New York City is the latest state or city to consider cutting business ties with the embattled San Francisco banking giant in the wake of a sham-accounts scandal that exploded in September, The Post has learned.

Wells Fargo inked a contract with New York’s Department of Finance earlier this year to process credit-card transactions.

The deal runs from July 1 to June 30, 2021.

Wells Fargo will pocket $1.3 million a year under the deal, according to a copy of the paperwork obtained by The Post.

Read on.