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February 6, 2020 Volume XXVII, Number 25 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit www.boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@ boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper. 690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2020 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.
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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
Wrecking homeowners’ American Dream by Dave Anderson
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t the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg told the uber-rich that they should abandon their fossil fuel investments. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said she should go to college “to study economics” before “she can come back and explain that to us.” This provoked Yanis Varoufakis, economist and a former finance minister of Greece, to sarcastically remark that if Thunberg studied mainstream economics, she would learn that “neither a climate disaster nor an economic crisis is possible.” He said mainstream I
economics textbooks offer “models of markets where the unfettered private profit drive is shown mathematically to serve the public interest.” Actually Mnuchin could teach a course on how to wipe out the wealth of millions of American families and get the taxpayers to pay you to do it. That’s what you conclude after reading Aaron Glantz’s impressive book, Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream. Glantz is senior reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, a two-time Peabody Award winner and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Mnuchin is a major villain in FEBRUARY 6, 2020
Homewreckers. The book reveals how members of Donald Trump’s inner circle took advantage of the 2008 housing crash to enrich themselves. There was a “recovery” of sorts where large private equity firms bought up hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes and turned them into rental properties. The culprits in this scheme included Trump pals such as Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Trump’s longtime friend and confidant Tom Barrack, and billionaire Republican donor Steve Schwarzman. Glantz writes that now these vulture capitalists of Wall Street have powerful positions in the federal government and “are creating new financial products that threaten to make the wealth transfers of the [housing] bust permanent.” Glantz was inspired to write the book when he heard that 8 million Americans had lost their homes in the see THE ANDERSON FILES Page 6
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