史蒂芬•姆钦：特朗普的理想财长

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.

对史蒂芬•姆钦(Steven Mnuchin)而言，如果他的美国财长提名因27美分搞砸，那就太遗憾了。然而，两年前，正是为了区区27美分，姆钦当时担任董事长的OneWest银行竟试图要取消奥西•洛夫顿(Ossie Lofton)的房子的赎回权。

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.

当时已90岁高龄的洛夫顿女士收到了一张423.30美元的账单：她以位于佛罗里达莱克兰(Lakeland)的房子为抵押获得贷款的相关保险费。她向银行寄回一张423美元的支票。OneWest继续索要剩余30美分。她又写了一张支票，但误把数字写成3美分。随后，银行向老人发出了止赎通知。

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.

在马萨诸塞州民主党参议员伊丽莎白•沃伦(Elizabeth Warren)等批评人士看来，发生这样的事情应自动取消姆钦担任政府高官的资格。在姆钦上周被当选总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)提名几小时内，沃伦发布了一份声明，将这位富豪银行家形容为“金融危机中的阿甘(Forrest Gump)”，在其任职高盛(Goldman Sachs)、一家对冲基金以及OneWest银行期间沉溺于“华尔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.

洛夫顿的律师林恩•德赖斯代尔(Lynn Drysdale)不愿就姆钦是否适合这一职位发表自己的看法。但她表示，这起最先由Politico报道的围绕27美分大动干戈的事件是影响老年人的“大量”类似案件的一起，其中许多案件都涉及OneWest银行。

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银行总部位于帕萨迪纳(Pasadena)，姆钦在2009年至2015年期间担任银行董事长，2015年将该行出售给了纽约CIT集团。加州一家信贷法律顾问机构的副主管凯文•斯坦(Kevin Stein)表示，2009年至2015年期间，在将人们逐出自家住房方面，OneWest银行创造了“即使不是最糟糕、也是最糟糕之一的”纪录。

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.

没人怀疑特朗普挑选的财长头脑精明、意志坚定。他的前同事、合伙人都极力赞扬他在收购OneWest银行(当时称为印地麦克银行(IndyMac))期间表现出的镇定，他在金融危机特别严重的阶段组建了一支全明星投资者团队——其中包括乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)和迈克尔•戴尔(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.

有些人钦佩他以执行制片人身份闯入好莱坞，凭借《乐高大电影》(The Lego Movie)、《美国的狙击手》(American Sniper)等大片横空出世。一位前同事一想到姆钦就暗暗发笑——他结过两次婚，有三个孩子，与迷人的未婚妻、来自爱丁堡的35岁二线女演员路易丝•林顿(Louise Linton)在红地毯上摆出僵硬的姿势。

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.

尽管如此，一些了解他的人似乎担心他的最新提名。他们担心他将在提名听证中遭遇困难，比如参议员痛批洛夫顿等案子，或者质问他为何如此走运地在2005年从伯纳德•马多夫(Bernard Madoff)的庞氏骗局中抽回320万美元——该骗局3年后破产。后来，一位受托人曾起诉姆钦要追回损失，但在联邦上诉法院裁定追回这笔资金为时已晚之后撤销了起诉。

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.

对其他人而言，真正的问题在于姆钦缺少在真正的大舞台上的经验。如果他被确认为美国第77任财政部长，现年53岁的姆钦将追随罗伯特•鲁宾(Robert Rubin，1995-1999年担任美国财长)和汉克•保尔森(Hank Paulson，2006-2009年担任美国财长)的脚步。鲁宾和保尔森在进入政府任职前，都曾执掌过高盛，分别担任过联席董事长和首席执行官。

“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.”

“鲁宾是人中翘楚，保尔森在艰难的环境下完成了非常出色的工作，”一名曾在这家华尔街银行工作的前员工称，“史蒂芬不如他们，只能算替补。”

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.

他在曼哈顿上东区(Upper East Side)衣食无忧的环境中长大。他的父亲罗伯特(Robert)是高盛股票部门的合伙人，被认为是大宗股票交易的先驱。罗伯特如今经营着一家艺术画廊，以交易波洛克(Jackson Pollock)、德•库宁(Willem De Kooning)和罗斯科(Rothko)等抽象表现派艺术家的作品而闻名。

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.

身为姆钦家的5个孩子之一，史蒂芬曾就读于纽约精英学校河谷学校(Riverdale Country School)，之后进入耶鲁大学(Yale)。在高盛时，他在交易抵押债券方面表现不俗。他于1994年成为合伙人(同年他父亲退休)，在2002年离开高盛前他已晋升至首席信息官一职。在那个时代，合伙人纷纷离开高盛，经营自己的基金，通常带着来自前同事个人账户的上千万美元作为启动资金。他的一位前高盛同事称，在资本管理公司Dune Capital Management，姆钦的表现比平均水平略高一点;强于JC Flowers的克里斯托弗•弗劳尔斯(Christopher Flowers)和峰堡(Fortress)的迈克•诺沃格拉茨(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使姆钦成为了巨富。该银行以34亿美元的价格出售，略高于其资产的账面价值;但是由于之前的收购价非常低，让当年的收购财团赚了两倍以上(包括持有该银行期间分得的股息)。

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.

当选总统的商务部长人选——79岁的私募股权大亨威尔伯•罗斯(Wilbur Ross)——在BankUnited银行身上也同样大赚了一笔。BankUnited是一家位于佛罗里达州的银行，在印地麦克银行之后不久遭的噩运。曾经的银行从业人士、如今在哈佛大学肯尼迪学院(Harvard Kennedy School)担任高级研究员的托德•贝克(Todd Baker)称，姆钦和罗斯都很“狡猾”。联邦存款保险公司(FDIC)在金融危机期间控制了数十家银行，由于其急于将控制的大型银行脱手，姆钦和罗斯得以敲定非常划算的交易。“(FDIC)把它们的命运交给了他们，”贝克表示。

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

特朗普上周赞扬姆钦在OneWest完成“非常专业”的工作以及为投资者赚得数十亿美元。

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

“这正是我的团队想要的人，”特朗普表示，“来代表我们的国家。”