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Major Clinton Super P.A.C. Donor Is a Profiteer of the Foreclosure Crisis
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (Roger H. Goun / (CC BY 2.0))
One of Hillary Clinton’s major donors is former Goldman Sachs employee Donald Mullen Jr., a man who, when he began to see the market decline that led to the 2008 crash, cheerfully wrote to his colleagues: “Sounds like we will make some serious money.”
Zaid Jilani writes at The Intercept:
Mullen, while a Goldman Sachs employee, pioneered the trades that allowed the mega-bank to profit from the collapse of the housing market. Mullen’s team utilized financial instruments called collateralized debt obligations to essentially bet against subprime mortgages. […]
In 2012, Mullen left Goldman Sachs to do the opposite of what he did in 2007: He started a hedge fund, the purpose of which was to buy up foreclosed homes and rent them out. New York magazine’s Kevin Roose described the career change this way: “A guy whose most famous trade was a successful bet on the full-scale implosion of the housing market is now swooping in to pick up the pieces on the other end.”
Mullen gave $100,000 to Priorities USA Action on June 30. According to Federal Election Commission data, this is the largest single contribution he has made to any soft money organization in his giving history. (In total, he has given $220,000 to soft money groups and $529,621 in individual contributions.) […]
Back in the last presidential election, Priorities USA used both the foreclosure crisis and Wall Street as campaign issues against the Republicans. In a 90-second ad hitting Mitt Romney, for instance, the Super PAC used a clip of the former Massachusetts governor saying that we shouldn’t “try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”
Today, Priorities USA is running ads focusing on a variety of issues, but avoiding direct attacks on Wall Street. Its primary social media account, on Twitter, has mentioned Wall Street only once, pointing to an article about Clinton’s financial plan that, as it turns out, leaves big banks intact.
Read more here.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/major_clinton_super_pac_donor_is_a_foreclosure_crisis_profiteer_20151209/
