The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL The New York Times

Tom Price’s Dubious Trades in Health Care Stocks
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDJAN. 18, 2017

Even before Tom Price became President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, he played a big role in shaping health policy in the House. He also frequently traded health care stocks, raising questions about whether he used his position in Congress for personal profit.

Mr. Price, who will testify at a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, has bought and sold stocks worth more than $300,000 over the last four years, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. His trades included shares of at least two companies that stood to benefit from legislation he voted for, had sponsored or was involved in. Democratic lawmakers have called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the trades for potential violations of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which prohibits lawmakers, their staff members and executive branch officials from trading on nonpublic information.

Experts say Mr. Price’s trades may have also violated House ethics rules. The Trump transition team says Mr. Price, who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, did nothing wrong and will sell his stocks to avoid conflicts of interest if confirmed.

These questions come at a moment of utter confusion about the Trump team’s position on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump said over the weekend that his replacement for the 2010 law would provide “insurance for everybody,” but Mr. Price previously proposed a replacement that would greatly reduce government spending on health, making it impossible for millions of people to buy health insurance, especially the old, sick and poor. If Republicans repeal major provisions of the A.C.A. as Mr. Price and his Republican colleagues want, the number of Americans without health insurance will increase by 32 million over 10 years from its current historic low of 29 million, or 9.1 percent of the population, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.

That danger points to the most important line of inquiry at Mr. Price’s hearing, but it should not prevent questioning him as well about his stock trades. For example, can Mr. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, explain his relationship with Zimmer Biomet, a maker of joint replacements? He acquired shares in that company less than a week before introducing legislation that would have delayed a federal regulation expected to hurt Zimmer’s sales, according to CNN. The company also contributed to Mr. Price’s re-election committee. Trump transition officials say Mr. Price was not aware of that stock purchase, which was made by a broker.

He also needs to explain how he came to buy the stock last summer of Innate Immunotherapeutics, a small Australian company that is developing a treatment for multiple sclerosis, through private offerings for sophisticated investors that were not made available to the public. The company’s drug could benefit from the 21st Century Cures Act, which Mr. Price voted for. The law, signed in December, will speed up the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of new medicines. Another lawmaker, Representative Chris Collins of New York, who is a member of the Trump transition team, is Innate’s largest shareholder and is on its board.

At the very least, Mr. Price exercised abysmal judgment by trading the shares of companies over whose fortunes he exercised so much control. A conscientious public servant would have been expected to avoid direct investments in health stocks entirely and instructed his broker to do so, too.

Emphasis added by poster.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/tom-prices-dubious-trades-in-health-care-stocks.html

Steve Mnuchin, foreclosure king, now runs your US Treasury

BY MARK PLOTKIN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 02/17/17 01:00 PM EST


Where do they find these people? Appointed by the president as Cabinet members, many have past lives and records that should immediately disqualify them for any high office.

Someone who has not been given the attention he so richly deserves is Steven Mnuchin, the new secretary of the Treasury.

Only one Democratic senator voted for him: Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Every other Democratic senator voted a resounding "no."

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said the following of Mnuchin: "His complicity in the 2008 financial crisis raises serious doubts."

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) went further: "He was part of the cadre of corporate raiders that brought our economy to its knees."

Of the astute businessman's failure to disclose $100 million in an overseas tax haven, Menendez added: "One does not go and create offshore entities at the end of the day other than to avoid, in some form or fashion, the tax laws of the United States. That's pretty simple."

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) did not hesitate to call Mnuchin "greedy" and "unethical." She backed it up with these blunt words: "Whether illegally foreclosing on thousands of families, skirting the law with offshore tax havens or helping design tactics that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, Steve Mnuchin made a career — and millions of dollars — pioneering increasingly deceptive and predatory ways to rob hardworking Americans of their savings and homes."
 
Seemingly, Mnuchin was another one of President Trump's campaign thank-yous. He was one of the very few corporate executives who would actually step forward and be seen raising money for Trump, even going so far as becoming the campaign's national finance chair.

Before that, though, Mnuchin distinguished himself by making out like a bandit during the worst financial crisis our country has faced since the Great Depression.

This is all well-documented by David Dayen, author of "Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud." In an exhaustive article in The Nation, Dayen chronicles how Mnuchin got fabulously rich while hundreds of thousands lost their homes.

In 2008, Mnuchin made a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). He and his investment group bought a predatory lender named Indy Mac, renaming it "OneWest." They then started foreclosing on homeowners.

While doing that, he "harvested fees for appraisals and inspections and late payments, and got protected by a federal backstop. The FDIC lost $13 billion on Indy Mac; Mnuchin and company made $3 billion in profits."

To make this tidy sum for himself, Mnuchin used something called "servicer-driven defaults." This practice entailed "telling homeowners they must miss payments to get help, and when they do, [the banks] move to foreclose."

The other devious ploy is something called "dual tracking." This is "where servicers negotiate modifications and pursue foreclosures at the same time."

If that were not enough, Dayen cites "a decided racial component. 68 percent of OneWest 36,000 plus foreclosures in California were in non-white areas." In addition, "OneWest was a market leader in foreclosing on the elderly: its subsidiary Financial Freedom carried out a disproportionate number of reverse mortgage foreclosures, which target seniors to suck out their home equity."

Finally, to top it off, OneWest engaged in thousands of "robo signings." This was the odious and fraudulent practice of signing sworn affidavits while not reviewing the documents. Some were signed at "30 seconds a clip." This practice was done "750 times a week on eventually 36,000 plus loans."

Dayen claims that "millions of homeowners were thrown out of their homes based on false documents."

So the long and short of this is that one Steven Mnuchin, who led and sanctioned these horrible business practices, is rewarded with a position that is fifth in the presidential line of succession.

Couldn't Trump find someone who didn't have such a record? Someone who didn't benefit from the misery of others?

The president has demonstrated once again that he so sorely lacks good judgment, and, contrary to his claims, has no apparent skill in picking talented or qualified people to serve our country.

Mark Plotkin is a contributor to the BBC on American politics and a columnist for The Georgetowner. Previously, he was the political analyst for WAMU-FM, Washington's NPR affiliate, and later became the political analyst for WTOP-FM, Washington's all-news radio station. He is a winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing.

Emphasis added by poster.


http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/320122-steve-mnuchin-foreclosure-king-now-runs-your-us

Are you aware that Mnuchin dispossed 40,000 families from their homes, using robosigning (which is illegal)?

Do you know he tried to kick a woman our of her home because she sent in her mortgage payment fifty cents short--Fifty Cents!

Do you know when he filled our his financial form necessary to government service, he left $100,000,000 our of his net worth--a lie, perhaps, or merely an oversight. One hundred million dollars left of the form An An Oversight?

Do you know that Tom Price traded stocks using inside information he learned in his position in Congress? As Chairman of the Committee On Health?

Do you know The Hill called him 'the most dangerous men in America' (6/17/17)?

"As House Budget Committee Chair, where he seemed largely focused on increasing the value of his healthcare stocks."

Do you know he got stock at a special price because he was a member of congress, heading a committee that was very important to medical stocks?

If these two don't qualify as cooks and slimeballs, the terms no longer have any meaning.