Steven Mnuchin – the swamp filling up

Ex-Goldman Sachser Steven Mnuchin has been confirmed as Treasury Secretary after facing withering criticism over his former bank’s treatment of foreclosure victims in his hearing. During his time there, he worked in the mortgage department, dealing with products such as collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps, which arguably played a major part in the 2008 financial crisis.  Elizabeth Warren called him “the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis”. “He managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street,” she said. “He spent two decades at Goldman Sachs helping the bank peddle the same kind of mortgage products that blew up the economy and sucked down billions in taxpayer bailout money before he moved on to run a bank that was infamous for aggressively foreclosing on families.” In 2009, he became chairman of a troubled housing lender, IndyMac, renamed OneWest. Two California housing watchdogs filed a federal complaint against the company, accusing it of violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

He has no government experience; and neither does National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, also former Goldman Sachs. Mnuchin also finances movies – The Devil Wears Prada, the X-Men franchise and Avatar.

Born 21 Dec 1962, New York, he’s a last degree Sun Sagittarius trine Mars in Leo and Uranus in early Virgo; with Pluto Uranus opposition Jupiter in Pisces – a risk-taker, impulsive, outspoken, overly confident. His relationship chart with Trump is high-pressure, stressed and could easily end in a catastrophic fall out. There’s a high-octane Mars Pluto conjunction, which could all too easily turn into bitter hostility. It is sextile Neptune and inconjunct the composite Sun – so a composite Yod of an extraordinarily powerful variety, which could certainly be used for crisis-management and pushing through bold schemes against heavy resistance. But it has all the seeds of destruction wrapped in it, either of the relationship (ultimately most likely) or in the joint projects on which they embark.

There is a sugary sweet composite Sun opposition Venus square Jupiter as well, so initially good feelings, but once they get scraped away with tr Saturn square the composite Sun and conjunct Jupiter from later this month effectively right through till November, the underlying bruising ego-clashes will show through. Tr Uranus will also oppose the composite Neptune and square Uranus late April/May and again late in the year, so it’s going to be a very rocky ride. Trump has given him four months to come up with a plan for deregulating Wall Street, tax reforms etc.

Every criticism Trump threw at Hillary Clinton – untrustworthy where national security was concerned, in bed with the swamp alligators – is unbelievably a thousand times truer of him. Conducting a high-alert security crisis in a Florida dining room with guests present, as if it were a piece of street theatre is beyond parody.