A coalition fighting for a fair economy isn’t letting Mnuchin's old bank off the hook for its shady practices under his reign. The California Reinvestment Coalition filed a fair housing complaint against OneWest in 2017 for redlining, and they've just settled an agreement with the bank that will lead to millions in investments for California’s communities of color.
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THIS WEEK
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We’ve had more mass shootings in the United States in 2019 than days so far this year. Here at Inequality.org, we’re mourning the victims of this weekend’s back-to-back deadly shootings in El Paso and Dayton today.
Amid the mourning for the dozens of people killed this weekend, we’re also taking care not to forget those who are making big bucks off the ongoing violence — from the weapons manufacturers to the media platforms that rake in cash spewing hate.
These players all have blood on their hands. They ought to remind us of the deadly dangers we face when we let some among us privilege profits over people’s lives.
Chuck Collins, for the Institute for Policy Studies Inequality.org team |
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INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS
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FACES ON THE FRONTLINES
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California Coalition Takes On the Foreclosure King
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| Steven Mnuchin has offered critics plenty to be upset about during his tenure as treasury secretary. But his lofty status in the Trump administration has been the natural next step for Mnuchin, a high-finance exec widely known as the “foreclosure king” for his ruthlessness managing OneWest Bank in the wake of the financial crisis. A coalition fighting for a fair economy isn’t letting that bank off the hook for its shady practices under Mnuchin’s reign. The California Reinvestment Coalition filed a fair housing complaint against OneWest for redlining, and they've just settled an agreement with the bank that will lead to millions in investments for California’s communities of color. Vijay Das, the National Policy and Communications Director for the California Reinvestment Coalition, tells us more about the settlement. |
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WORDS OF WISDOM
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT
OF THE WEEK
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An Expert in Obfuscation Tackles Tax Confiscation
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| Higher taxes? Billionaire hedge fund kingpin Leon Cooperman says he could personally afford to pay half his income in taxes. But don’t get Cooperman started on taxes on grand private fortunes. The 76-year-old hates the idea of taxing personal wealth over $50 million at a 2 percent annual rate, as White House hopeful Elizabeth Warren has proposed, and he’s been busy making his opposition clear, most recently last week in a Financial Times op-ed. The wealthy, says Cooperman, “should pay more,” but our society simply cannot afford, he maintains, to let that more become “confiscatory.” Hedge fund movers and shakers like Cooperman, economist Gabriel Zucman tweeted after the op-ed appeared, certainly do know a thing or two about “confiscatory” rates. Hedge funds typically charge their investors a 2 percent annual fee on the money they ask hedge funds to manage — and then charge those same investors another 20 percent fee on any profits that managing should make. |
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GREED AT A GLANCE
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TOO MUCH
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| Can the Rich Hardwire Inequality into Our DNA? |
| What used to be pure science fiction — the ability to edit our DNA — has now become science reality. A generation ago our hippest young high-tech hotshots were programming in computer code. Now the high-tech hip are programming our genes, and worried scientists are already talking about the need for a moratorium on making inheritable edits. They have reason to worry. The emerging “free market” for genetic enhancement might well encode our world’s current inequities on a permanent basis. But one leading historian has a promising egalitarian approach that could stop any slide to a dystopian DNA future. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati, author of The Case for a Maximum Wage, has more. |
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MUST READS
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This week on Inequality.org
Jarod Facundo, What Medicare for All Would Have Meant a Decade Ago. Imagine if a new generation could experience guaranteed care, with quality not determined by wealth or income, but instead delivered as the human right health care ought to be.
Bama Athreya. The ‘Ghost Work’ That Keeps Social Media Clean. Digital platforms have contracted on-demand armies to do the psychologically exhausting piecework that keeps the tech economy humming.
Elsewhere on the Web
Steve Wamhoff, A Wealth Tax Might Be Easier to Implement than You Think, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. A fresh approach to assessing the value of the wealth of the wealthy.
George Monbiot, From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise – backed by billionaire oligarchs, Guardian. How corporate power has evolved — and the political implications.
Jeff Hauser and Eleanor Eagan, Private Equity’s Next Leveraged Buyout Might Be the Oval Office, American Prospect. Several White House candidates who’ve taken donor cash from private-equity barons have remained silent about the threat the industry poses.
David Bollier, Reclaiming the Commons, Boston Review. The silent theft of our shared civic inheritance need not continue.
Donald Low, Two myths the Singapore government has been repeating about inequality, Mothership. The rich the world over spout the same rationalizations for their fortunes. An economist sums up the best retorts.
Alex Braae, Don’t eat the rich. Just set hard limits on their greed, Spinoff. A New Zealander makes a pitch for capping the wealth of the wealthy.
Shawn Gude, The Ultra-Rich Are Ultra-Conservative, Jacobin. The latest academic research on the political perspectives of the awesomely affluent. |
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A FINAL FIGURE
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