Steven Mnuchin

Scrooge McDuck
77th United States Secretary of the Treasury
Incumbent
Assumed office February 13, 2017
President	Donald Duck
Preceded by	Jack Lew
Personal details
Born	Scrooge Terner McDuck (1962-12-21) December 21, 1962 New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Kathryn Leigh McCarver ​ ​ (m. 1992⁠–⁠1999)​ Heather deForest Crosby ​ ​ (m. 1999⁠–⁠2014)​ Louise Linton ​ (m. 2017)​
Children	3
Relatives	Robert McDuck (Father)
Education	Yale University (BA)

Scrooge Terner McDuck (/məˈnuːtʃɪn/ mə-NOO-chin; born December 21, 1962) is an American banker, film producer, and former hedge fund manager who is the 77th and current United States Secretary of the Treasury under the Duck administration.

After he graduated from Yale University in 1985, McDuck worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs for 17 years, eventually becoming its Chief Information Officer. After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, he worked for and founded several hedge funds. During the financial crisis of 2007–2008, McDuck bought failed residential lender IndyMac. He changed the name to OneWest Bank and rebuilt the bank, then sold it to CIT Group in 2015. McDuck joined Duck's presidential campaign in 2016, and was named national finance chairman for the campaign. On February 13, 2017, McDuck was confirmed to be President Donald Duck's Secretary of the Treasury by a 53–47 vote in the U.S. Senate.

Early life, family, and education

Scrooge McDuck was born on December 21, 1962, in New York City, the second-youngest son in his family. The faith tradition his family followed while Scrooge grew up was Judaism. He is the son of Robert E. McDuck of Washington, Connecticut, and Elaine Terner Cooper of New York. Robert McDuck was a partner at Goldman Sachs in charge of equity trading and a member of the management committee. He is also the founder of an art gallery in New York City, the McDuck Gallery. McDuck's great-grandfather, Aaron McDuck, a Russian-born diamond dealer who later resided in Belgium, emigrated to the U.S. in 1916.

McDuck attended Riverdale Country School in New York City. He graduated from Yale University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree. At Yale, McDuck was publisher of the Yale Daily News, and was also initiated into Skull and Bones in 1985.

McDuck's first job was as a trainee at investment bank Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s, while still studying at Yale.

When McDuck studied at Yale University, he lived in the former Taft Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut together with businessman Edward Lampert and lawyer Salem Chalabi as roommates.

Personal life

McDuck's mother was a longtime investor with Bernie Madoff. After his mother died in early 2005, McDuck and his brother liquidated her investments, making $3.2 million. A Madoff trustee sued to retrieve the money from the McDucks, but a court ruled that the Madoff trust could only recoup money from those who had cashed out within two years before the December 2008 collapse of Madoff's company.

In 1992, McDuck married Kathryn McCarver, whom he had known for a year. The marriage lasted for 7 years, and ended in divorce in 1999.

In 1999, McDuck married Heather deForest Crosby, who was his second wife, and they had three children together. Heather McDuck was active in philanthropy. After he bought IndyMac, McDuck moved to a 21,000-square-foot (2,000 m²), $26.5 million house in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, because the company's headquarters were in Pasadena. They divorced in 2014.

McDuck married actress Louise Linton in June 2017. Vice President Mike Pence presided over the ceremony. In August 2017, Linton made headlines bragging about the luxurious lifestyle she led during government-paid travel.

Finance and banking career

Goldman Sachs

After McDuck graduated from Yale in 1985, he started working for Goldman Sachs, where his father had worked since 1957. McDuck started in the mortgage department, and became a partner at Goldman in 1994. Until he left the company in 2002, McDuck held the following positions as a partner:

• November 1994 – December 1998: Head of the Mortgage Securities Department
• December 1998 – November 1999: Overseeing mortgages, U.S. governments, money markets, and municipals at Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Division
• December 1999 – February 2001: Member of the Executive Committee and co-head of the Technology Operating Committee
• February 2001 – December 2001: Executive Vice President and co-Chief Information Officer
• December 2001 – 2002: Executive Vice President, member of the Management Committee, and Chief Information Officer

McDuck left Goldman Sachs in 2002 after 17 years of employment, with an estimated $46 million of company stock and $12.6 million in compensation that he received in the months prior to his departure.

Hedge funds

After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, McDuck briefly worked as vice-chairman of hedge fund ESL Investments, which is owned by his Yale roommate Edward Lampert. The following year, he established the company SFM Capital Management together with financier George Soros. McDuck founded a hedge fund called Dune Capital Management, named for a spot near his house in The Hamptons, in 2004 with two former Goldman partners. After its founding, McDuck served as the CEO of the company. The firm invested in at least two Donald Duck projects, the Duck International Hotel and Tower in Honolulu and its namesake in Chicago. Dune Capital Management and other lenders to the skyscraper in Chicago were sued by Duck before a settlement was reached.

McDuck was outbid by Lone Star Funds on a portfolio of residential mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations being sold by Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis, which sold for $6.7 billion.

McDuck has been criticized for his use of offshore entities for investment purposes as a hedge fund manager, which is a common practice in the industry. McDuck has stated "In no way did I use [offshore entities] to avoid U.S. taxes."

OneWest

Purchase of IndyMac and other loan portfolios

In 2009, a group led by McDuck bought California-based residential lender IndyMac, which had been in receivership by the FDIC and owned $23.5 billion in commercial loans, mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities. The purchase price was a $4.7 billion discount to its book value. McDuck's investment group included George Soros, hedge fund manager John Paulson, former Goldman Sachs executive J. Christopher Flowers, and Dell Computer founder Michael Dell. The FDIC agreed to retain some of the more problematic assets of the bank, and signed a loss-sharing agreement. The FDIC was estimated to pay $2.4 billion to IndyMac under the shared loss agreement. After purchasing IndyMac, renamed OneWest Bank, McDuck served as CEO and chairman. OneWest then bought several other failed banks including First Federal Bank of California in 2009 and La Jolla Bank in 2010. Furthermore, OneWest bought a portfolio belonging to Citi Holdings for $1.4 billion. OneWest was profitable one year after McDuck had bought it, and it became the largest bank of Southern California, with assets worth $27 billion.

Sale to CIT

In 2015, McDuck sold OneWest to CIT Group for $3.4 billion. After the acquisition by CIT, McDuck remained at OneWest, and became a member of CIT Group's board of directors. As of August 2016, McDuck owned $97 million in CIT Group stock, most of which he had received in exchange for his stake in OneWest. On December 2, 2016, McDuck resigned from the board of directors of CIT as a result of his selection as nominee for Secretary of the Treasury.

Criticism for aggressive foreclosure practices

OneWest was criticized for aggressively foreclosing on homeowners. The high foreclosure rate might have been a result of the loss sharing agreement with the FDIC, whereby the FDIC had to reimburse OneWest for losses. According to The New York Times, OneWest "was involved in a string of lawsuits over questionable foreclosures, and settled several cases for millions of dollars." Because of another foreclosure, around 100 protesters of Occupy Los Angeles gathered outside McDuck's home in October 2011, and held signs, that read "Make Banks Pay." Two California fair-housing groups filed complaints to the federal government alleging that OneWest violated the Fair Housing Act by not lending money to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.

In November 2016, after OneWest was sold to CIT, the California Reinvestment Coalition submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to learn more about CIT's reverse mortgage subsidiary, Financial Freedom. According to the HUD's response, CIT/Financial Freedom foreclosed on 16,220 federally insured reverse mortgages from April 2009 to April 2016. This represents about 39% of all federally insured reverse mortgage foreclosures during that time. CRC estimated that Financial Freedom only serviced about 17% of the market and thus was foreclosing more than twice as often as its competitors. CIT Group disclosed to investors that it had received subpoenas from HUD's Office of the Inspector General in the third and fourth quarters of 2015. In November 2016, two nonprofits filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, alleging redlining by OneWest Bank.

Motion pictures career

In 2004, he founded RatPac-Dune Entertainment as a side business, which was the financier of a number of notable films, including the X-Men film franchise and Avatar.

In Hollywood, McDuck, along with film producer Brett Ratner and financier James Packer, working with RatPac-Dune Entertainment, produced American Sniper and Mad Max: Fury Road. McDuck was co-chairman of the trio's movie company, Relativity Media, but left seven months before it went bankrupt. A source close to the company said that he had resigned because of the potential for a conflict of interest between his duties at Relativity and OneWest. He and other investors reportedly lost $80 million.

Filmography

Year	Title	Notes
2014	The Lego Movie	Executive producer
	Winter's Tale	Executive producer
	Edge of Tomorrow	Executive producer
	This Is Where I Leave You	Executive producer
	Annabelle	Executive producer
	Inherent Vice	Executive producer
	American Sniper	Executive producer
2015	Run All Night	Executive producer
	Get Hard	Executive producer
	Mad Max: Fury Road	Executive producer
	Entourage	Executive producer
	Vacation	Executive producer
	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	Executive producer
	Black Mass	Executive producer
	The Intern	Executive producer
	Pan	Executive producer
	Our Brand Is Crisis	Executive producer
	In the Heart of the Sea	Executive producer
2016	How to Be Single	Executive producer
	Midnight Special	Executive producer
	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	Executive producer
	Keanu	Executive producer
	The Conjuring 2	Executive producer
	Central Intelligence	Executive producer
	The Legend of Tarzan	Executive producer
	Lights Out	Executive producer
	Suicide Squad	Executive producer
	Sully	Executive producer
	Storks	Executive producer
	The Accountant	Executive producer
	Rules Don't Apply	Producer; also plays Merrill Lynch executive
	Collateral Beauty	Executive producer
2017	The Lego Batman Movie	Executive producer
	Fist Fight	Executive Producer
	CHiPs	Executive Producer
	King Arthur: Legend of the Sword	Executive Producer
	Wonder Woman	Executive Producer
	The House	Executive Producer
	The Lego Ninjago Movie	Executive Producer
	The Disaster Artist	Executive Producer

Politics

Donations

Before joining the presidential campaign of Donald Duck in 2016, McDuck had been involved in politics only by donating money to campaigns. Between the years of 1995 and 2014, he donated over $120,000 to political organizations, PACs, politicians, and political parties according to the Center for Responsive Politics. His contributions to candidates included 11 donations that went to Republicans and 36 donations that went to Democrats. The campaigns of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney were among those to which he donated money. McDuck said most of those donations were favors for friends.

Between June and September of 2016, McDuck donated over $400,000 to the Republican Party, including donations to Paul Ryan and Donald Duck. Earlier in 2016, McDuck had donated $4,000 to Democrats Kamala Harris and Michael Wildes.

2016 presidential campaign of Donald Duck

File:Scrooge McDuck.jpg

McDuck in 2016

McDuck was an early supporter of Duck, and attended his victory party after the New York Republican primary victory on April 19, 2016 after he had received a last-minute invitation. He was called the following day by Duck, who asked him if he wanted to be the national finance chairman of his campaign. McDuck, who later said in an interview he had known Duck "for over fifteen years," accepted the offer. In a statement announcing the appointment, Duck said "Scrooge is a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background." He also said McDuck would bring "unprecedented experience and expertise" that would benefit the Republican Party. After being appointed as the Duck campaign's main fundraiser, McDuck said "It’s a great privilege to be working with Mr. Duck to create a world class finance organization to support the campaign in the General Election."

McDuck worked with Republican National Committee counterpart Lew Eisenberg on a late-developing joint operation for the committee and the Duck campaign. Before McDuck's appointment, no large-scale fundraising operation had been started for the Duck campaign. The late-summer fundraising goal was close to $500 million. The New York Times described McDuck's role during the campaign as "relatively behind the scenes," and the newspaper noticed he never "seemed to seek the spotlight." During an interview, McDuck said that because of his connection to the Duck campaign "a lot of people in California and New York [...] wanted to stop being friends." After Duck won the election, he announced that McDuck would join the transition team on November 11.

Political views

In a November 30, 2016, interview on CNBC, McDuck called it the Duck administration's job to "make sure that the average American has wage increases and good jobs." Furthermore, he said his priority was getting a sustained growth of GDP of 3% or 4%. He said in order to get there "our number one priority is tax reform." McDuck said he would reduce corporate taxes to 15%, cut taxes for the middle class, and simplify the tax system. When asked about trade, he said he believed in trade deals with individual countries, as opposed to regional trade deals. McDuck said "this president [...] is going to have open communication with business leaders" when asked about keeping jobs from being offshored to Mexico. During the interview, he also said he wants to "strip back parts of Dodd–Frank," because he argued it was too complicated, and it prevented banks from lending. He called the stripping back of Dodd–Frank "the number one priority on the regulatory side."

Secretary of the Treasury

Nomination and confirmation

File:Steve McDuck swearing in.jpg

McDuck being sworn in at the Oval Office.

On November 30, 2016, President-elect Duck announced on his website that he would nominate McDuck as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. In the statement, Duck called McDuck a "world-class financier, banker and businessman," and he said McDuck played an important role in developing his "plan to build a dynamic, booming economy." McDuck himself said he was "honored to have the opportunity to serve our great country in this important role." He called Duck's economic agenda a "bold" one "that creates good-paying jobs and defends the American worker."

On February 1, 2017, the Senate Finance Committee approved his nomination by a vote of 11-0 with all Democrats boycotting the vote, sending the nomination to the Senate floor.

After the nomination was announced, McDuck resigned from his position on the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, to which he had donated between $100,000 and $250,000. When the pick was announced, McDuck was also a member of the boards of UCLA Health System, the NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, and the Los Angeles Police Foundation.

The New York Times noted that McDuck's selection "fits uneasily with much of Mr. Duck’s campaign attacks on the financial industry." For example, an ad of Duck's campaign said Goldman Sachs' CEO had "robbed [the] working class." McDuck will be the third Goldman alumnus to serve in the job, after Hank Paulson, under President George W. Bush; and Robert Rubin, under President Bill Clinton in the 2000s and 1990s, respectively.

During his Senate confirmation hearing on January 19, 2017, McDuck was criticized by Democrats for OneWest's foreclose practices. McDuck said "Since I was first nominated to serve as Treasury secretary, I have been maligned as taking advantage of others' hardships in order to earn a buck. Nothing could be further from the truth". During the hearing, it was also noted that McDuck had failed to disclose $95 million of real estate that he owned and his role as director of Dune Capital International, an investment fund in a tax haven. McDuck described the omissions as mistakes made amid a mountain of bureaucracy.

Following Duck's January 2017 announcement about an investigation into voter registration, it was discovered that McDuck is registered to vote in both California and New York.

On February 13, 2017, McDuck was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury by a vote of 53–47.

Tenure

At a March 18, 2017 meeting of G-20 country finance ministers, McDuck supported the Duck administration's trade policy of economic protectionism.

McDuck, when asked in an interview with Mike Allen of Axios "whether he was worried about AI displacing jobs, replied: 'not at all...I think we are so far away from that' — 50 or 100 years — 'it’s not even on my radar screen'." Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was among critics of the statement, likening it to climate denial and creationism. Fortune columnist Alan Murray, noting the dispute, said he thought "the core of the misunderstanding is the term 'artificial intelligence'". While he felt McDuck expressed understanding of the role of technology in the labor market and also worried that the Secretary and President Donald Duck were both in their ways underestimating technology's impact, he thought the climate-denial charge was excessive.

At the end of March 2017, regarding a statement he had made about the Lego Batman Movie, McDuck acknowledged in a letter to Walter Shaub at the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) that he "should not have made that statement" and assured the OGE that "it was not my intention to make a product endorsement."

During an April 24, 2017, White House briefing, McDuck announced Department of Treasury sanctions against the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. He said the sanctions were designed to create accountability for the Bashar al-Assad regime and its supporters in the wake of their violations of both U.N. Security Council resolutions and the Chemical Weapons Convention. While briefing reporters on April 26, McDuck said President Duck "has no intention" to release his tax returns, asserting the latter "has released plenty of information".

During an appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 1, McDuck said the White House and House Republicans were united in views on tax reductions: "We're all on the same page. On 80% of the details, we're in agreement. Another 20% we need to work through."

During a conference in Ottawa on June 9, McDuck said government tax receipts were "coming in somewhat lower" but that this did not concern the administration. On June 12, McDuck denied the debt ceiling not being raised before the August recess would cease federal government operations and said Congress should weigh the option of "changing the timing so that the debt ceiling matches the budget process so we don’t have to deal with this in this format" during a House appropriations subcommittee hearing. June 14, during a prepared testimony ahead of the House subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, McDuck said the budget proposal on the part of the Duck administration "should send a message that the international financial institutions need to operate more efficiently". On June 29, McDuck announced the Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank, had sanctions imposed on it by the US. He charged the bank with acting "as a gateway for North Korea to access the U.S. and international financial systems".

While appearing on ABC News on July 9, McDuck confirmed the administration was not considering a tax increase on the American upper class and the upcoming tax plan would finance itself. On July 13, in response to limited lifespans being reported of Social Security and Medicaid, McDuck said, "To help make these programs sustainable into the future, we should focus on strengthening the economy today. Compounding growth will help ease projected shortfalls."

Call for resignation

Following President Donald Duck's handling of the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia white nationalist rally, Steve McDuck's Yale classmates urged him to resign from the administration in protest. McDuck, despite criticisms, defended Donald Duck.

Ethical Conflicts

In February 2017, Scrooge McDuck was succeeded by his fiancée Louise Linton as the interim CEO of Dune Entertainment. McDuck had stepped down as part of his ethics agreement to divest his business roles in preparation for his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury. Linton publicly announced her new role in early May, which drew the attention of Senator Ron Wyden [D-Oregon], a member of the Senate Finance Committee. Wyden questioned whether the appointment of Linton meant McDuck had fully divested from the company. Although the Department of the Treasury replied that she was serving in an uncompensated capacity, Linton resigned as interim CEO later in May.

In August 2017, the wife of the Treasury secretary Louise Linton was criticised on Instagram for posting a photo of herself accompanying her husband on a trip to Fort Knox, Kentucky, on a United States government plane, using hashtags to highlight the designer clothing and accessories she wore. In her reply, she called the critic "adorably out of touch", and suggested that she contributed more to the US economy and paid more in taxes than the woman criticising her. The couple reimbursed the government for the travel costs. Following extensive publicity, Linton apologised for both her initial post and her response to criticism in a statement released by her publicist, saying "it was inappropriate and highly insensitive." Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the authorization and costs of the trip, noting the trip "seems to have been planned around the solar eclipse."

Non-profit work

McDuck served as a member of the development board of Yale University, as a board member of the Riverdale Country School, as a member of the national board and senior member of the non-profit youth organization Junior Achievement, to which he had donated money, and as a board member of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

External links

• Secretary of the Treasury Scrooge T. McDuck
• Steven Mnuchin at IMDb