Housing-crisis profits from predatory foreclosure directly financed Hollywood film catalogs

Evidence

Another pernicious example is the case of Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs trader and hedge fund manager who exploited the housing crisis and then used that money to enter Hollywood. The story begins with Mnuchin acquiring IndyMac, a mortgage-lending bank that had failed in 2008 and was seized by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). With a group of investors, Mnuchin renamed IndyMac OneWest Bank and then aggressively foreclosed on homeowners for profit, earning the accusation of “widespread misconduct” by the state attorney general’s office for repeatedly breaking California’s foreclosure laws and forging documents. The investors put 1.5 billion into the bank and sold it for more than 3 billion five years later. Mnuchin then turned his vulture capitalist tendencies toward Hollywood. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 298

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: tracing a single individual’s capital path from foreclosed homes through OneWest Bank to specific blockbusters like Batman v Superman — concrete chain of exploitation to cinematic form.