史蒂芬?姆欽：特朗普的理想財長

It would be a pity, for Steven Mnuchin, if his nomination for Treasury secretary were to come unstuck over 27 cents. Yet that is the sum for which OneWest, the bank he chaired, tried to foreclose on the house of Ossie Lofton two years ago.

對史蒂芬•姆欽(Steven Mnuchin)而言，如果他的美國財長提名因27美分搞砸，那就太遺憾了。然而，兩年前，正是為了區(qū)區(qū)27美分，姆欽當時擔任董事長的OneWest銀行竟試圖要取消奧西•洛夫頓(Ossie Lofton)的房子的贖回權(quán)。

Ms Lofton, then 90, was sent a bill for $423.30: an insurance premium on credit secured against the equity in her home in Lakeland, Florida. She sent back a cheque for $423. OneWest asked for the 30 cents. She wrote another cheque, mistakenly making it out for 3 cents. Then the bank served a foreclosure notice.

當時已90歲高齡的洛夫頓女士收到了一張423.30美元的賬單：她以位于佛羅里達萊克蘭(Lakeland)的房子為抵押獲得貸款的相關(guān)保險費。她向銀行寄回一張423美元的支票。OneWest繼續(xù)索要剩余30美分。她又寫了一張支票，但誤把數(shù)字寫成3美分。隨后，銀行向老人發(fā)出了止贖通知。

To critics such as Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, this kind of thing should automatically disqualify Mr Mnuchin from high office. Within hours of his nomination this week by Donald Trump, the president-elect, Ms Warren put out a statement characterising the multimillionaire banker as “the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis”, caught up in “all the worst practices on Wall Street” during his career at Goldman Sachs, a hedge fund and at OneWest.

在馬薩諸塞州民主黨參議員伊麗莎白•沃倫(Elizabeth Warren)等批評人士看來，發(fā)生這樣的事情應自動取消姆欽擔任政府高官的資格。在姆欽上周被當選總統(tǒng)唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)提名幾小時內(nèi)，沃倫發(fā)布了一份聲明，將這位富豪銀行家形容為“金融危機中的阿甘(Forrest Gump)”，在其任職高盛(Goldman Sachs)、一家對沖基金以及OneWest銀行期間沉溺于“華爾街一切最糟糕的做法”。

Lynn Drysdale, a lawyer for Ms Lofton, will not be drawn on whether she thinks Mr Mnuchin is fit for the job. But she says that the big fuss over a quarter and two pennies, first reported by Politico, is part of an “epidemic” of similar cases affecting elderly people, many of them involving OneWest.

洛夫頓的律師林恩•德賴斯代爾(Lynn Drysdale)不愿就姆欽是否適合這一職位發(fā)表自己的看法。但她表示，這起最先由Politico報道的圍繞27美分大動干戈的事件是影響老年人的“大量”類似案件的一起，其中許多案件都涉及OneWest銀行。

The Pasadena-based bank, chaired by Mr Mnuchin between 2009 and 2015, when it was sold to CIT Group of New York, had “one of the worst, if not the worst” records in kicking people out of their homes over that period, says Kevin Stein, deputy director of a credit advocacy group in California.

OneWest銀行總部位于帕薩迪納(Pasadena)，姆欽在2009年至2015年期間擔任銀行董事長，2015年將該行出售給了紐約CIT集團。加州一家信貸法律顧問機構(gòu)的副主管凱文•斯坦(Kevin Stein)表示，2009年至2015年期間，在將人們逐出自家住房方面，OneWest銀行創(chuàng)造了“即使不是最糟糕、也是最糟糕之一的”紀錄。

Nobody doubts that Mr Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary is a smart and determined man. Former colleagues and associates rave about the com­posure he showed during the buyout of OneWest (then known as IndyMac), marshalling an all-star team of investors — George Soros and Michael Dell among them — during a particularly intense phase of the crisis.

沒人懷疑特朗普挑選的財長頭腦精明、意志堅定。他的前同事、合伙人都極力贊揚他在收購OneWest銀行(當時稱為印地麥克銀行(IndyMac))期間表現(xiàn)出的鎮(zhèn)定，他在金融危機特別嚴重的階段組建了一支全明星投資者團隊——其中包括喬治•索羅斯(George Soros)和邁克爾•戴爾(Michael Dell)。

Others admire the way he broke in to Hollywood as an executive producer, popping up on the credits of blockbusters like The Lego Movie and American Sniper. One former colleague chuckles at the thought of Mr Mnuchin, twice married with three children, posing stiffly on red carpets with his glamorous fiancée, Louise Linton, a 35-year-old B-list actress from Edinburgh.

有些人欽佩他以執(zhí)行制片人身份闖入好萊塢，憑借《樂高大電影》(The Lego Movie)、《美國的狙擊手》(American Sniper)等大片橫空出世。一位前同事一想到姆欽就暗暗發(fā)笑——他結(jié)過兩次婚，有三個孩子，與迷人的未婚妻、來自愛丁堡的35歲二線女演員路易絲•林頓(Louise Linton)在紅地毯上擺出僵硬的姿勢。

Still, some who know him seem worried by his latest turn. They fear he will receive a rough ride in nomination hearings if senators rake over cases such as Ms Lofton’s or query his stroke of fortune in pulling $3.2m out of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in 2005, three years before it fell apart. A trustee later sued Mr Mnuchin to recoup losses, but dropped the case after a federal appeals court ruled that it was too late to claw back the cash.

盡管如此，一些了解他的人似乎擔心他的最新提名。他們擔心他將在提名聽證中遭遇困難，比如參議員痛批洛夫頓等案子，或者質(zhì)問他為何如此走運地在2005年從伯納德•馬多夫(Bernard Madoff)的龐氏騙局中抽回320萬美元——該騙局3年后破產(chǎn)。后來，一位受托人曾起訴姆欽要追回損失，但在聯(lián)邦上訴法院裁定追回這筆資金為時已晚之后撤銷了起訴。

For others, the real problem is Mr Mnuchin’s lack of experience on the really big stage. If confirmed as America’s 77th Treasury secretary, the 53-year-old would follow in the footsteps of Robert Rubin (1995-1999) and Hank Paulson (2006-2009), both of whom ran Goldman Sachs (as co-chair and chief executive respectively) before leaving for government.

對其他人而言，真正的問題在于姆欽缺少在真正的大舞臺上的經(jīng)驗。如果他被確認為美國第77任財政部長，現(xiàn)年53歲的姆欽將追隨羅伯特•魯賓(Robert Rubin，1995-1999年擔任美國財長)和漢克•保爾森(Hank Paulson，2006-2009年擔任美國財長)的腳步。魯賓和保爾森在進入政府任職前，都曾執(zhí)掌過高盛，分別擔任過聯(lián)席董事長和首席執(zhí)行官。

“Rubin is a one-in-a-million guy and Paulson did a very good job in a difficult situation,” says one former colleague at the Wall Street bank. “Steve is a second-stringer behind those guys.”

“魯賓是人中翹楚，保爾森在艱難的環(huán)境下完成了非常出色的工作，”一名曾在這家華爾街銀行工作的前員工稱，“史蒂芬不如他們，只能算替補。”

His upbringing, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was comfortable. His father, Robert, was a partner in the equities department at Goldman Sachs, credited with pioneering the art of trading big blocks of stock. Robert now runs an art gallery, known for dealing in abstract expressionists like Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko.

他在曼哈頓上東區(qū)(Upper East Side)衣食無憂的環(huán)境中長大。他的父親羅伯特(Robert)是高盛股票部門的合伙人，被認為是大宗股票交易的先驅(qū)。羅伯特如今經(jīng)營著一家藝術(shù)畫廊，以交易波洛克(Jackson Pollock)、德•庫寧(Willem De Kooning)和羅斯科(Rothko)等抽象表現(xiàn)派藝術(shù)家的作品而聞名。

One of five children, Steven was sent to New York’s elite Riverdale Country School and then to Yale. At Goldman he did well in trading mortgage bonds. He entered the partnership in 1994, the year his father retired, rising to chief information officer before leaving in 2002. It was an era of partners splitting off from Goldman to run their own funds, normally seeded with tens of millions from their former colleagues’ personal accounts. At Dune Capital Management, Mr Mnuchin did a little better than the average; better than Christopher Flowers at JC Flowers; better than Mike Novogratz at Fortress, says one former Goldmanite.

身為姆欽家的5個孩子之一，史蒂芬曾就讀于紐約精英學校河谷學校(Riverdale Country School)，之后進入耶魯大學(Yale)。在高盛時，他在交易抵押債券方面表現(xiàn)不俗。他于1994年成為合伙人(同年他父親退休)，在2002年離開高盛前他已晉升至首席信息官一職。在那個時代，合伙人紛紛離開高盛，經(jīng)營自己的基金，通常帶著來自前同事個人賬戶的上千萬美元作為啟動資金。他的一位前高盛同事稱，在資本管理公司Dune Capital Management，姆欽的表現(xiàn)比平均水平略高一點;強于JC Flowers的克里斯托弗•弗勞爾斯(Christopher Flowers)和峰堡(Fortress)的邁克•諾沃格拉茨(Mike Novogratz)。

OneWest was the deal that made Mr Mnuchin mega-rich. The bank was sold for $3.4bn, a little over the book value of its assets; but the purchase price was so low that the consortium more than tripled its money, when including dividends paid along the way.

出售OneWest使姆欽成為了巨富。該銀行以34億美元的價格出售，略高于其資產(chǎn)的賬面價值;但是由于之前的收購價非常低，讓當年的收購財團賺了兩倍以上(包括持有該銀行期間分得的股息)。

The president-elect’s choice for the commerce secretary — Wilbur Ross, a 79-year-old private-equity baron — did similarly well out of BankUnited, a Florida-based bank that hit the skids not long after IndyMac. Mr Mnuchin and Mr Ross are “sharpies”, says Todd Baker, a former banker and now a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. They cut great deals because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which had taken control of dozens of banks during the crisis, was desperate to get the big ones off its hands. “The [FDIC] got their heads handed to them,” he says.

當選總統(tǒng)的商務部長人選——79歲的私募股權(quán)大亨威爾伯•羅斯(Wilbur Ross)——在BankUnited銀行身上也同樣大賺了一筆。BankUnited是一家位于佛羅里達州的銀行，在印地麥克銀行之后不久遭的噩運。曾經(jīng)的銀行從業(yè)人士、如今在哈佛大學肯尼迪學院(Harvard Kennedy School)擔任高級研究員的托德•貝克(Todd Baker)稱，姆欽和羅斯都很“狡猾”。聯(lián)邦存款保險公司(FDIC)在金融危機期間控制了數(shù)十家銀行，由于其急于將控制的大型銀行脫手，姆欽和羅斯得以敲定非常劃算的交易。“(FDIC)把它們的命運交給了他們，”貝克表示。

Mr Trump this week celebrated the “very professional” job Mr Mnuchin did at OneWest, and the billions of dollars he made for his investors.

特朗普上周贊揚姆欽在OneWest完成“非常專業(yè)”的工作以及為投資者賺得數(shù)十億美元。

“That’s the kind of people I want in my administration,” he said, “representing our country.”
 

“這正是我的團隊想要的人，”特朗普表示，“來代表我們的國家。”