{"id":1841,"date":"2004-05-27T11:22:06","date_gmt":"2004-05-27T16:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1841.html"},"modified":"2004-05-27T11:22:06","modified_gmt":"2004-05-27T16:22:06","slug":"john-snows-10-million-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/john-snows-10-million-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"John Snow’s $10 million mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure this isn’t the kind of news<\/a> Treasury Secretary John Snow was hoping for upon releasing his first annual financial disclosure form.<\/p>\n

Oops. A red-faced Treasury Secretary John Snow, who has been going around the country preaching the importance of financial literacy, can now point to himself as a glaring example of what not to do.<\/p>\n

It turns out his investment adviser made a $10.87 million mistake. Snow didn’t catch it because he didn’t bother to read his financial statements for more than a year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s not forget, Snow is the U.S. Treasury<\/i> Secretary.<\/p>\n

This is a problem that may require a bit more than a “my bad” from Snow’s office. Snow has been working for months on regulations governing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but at the same time owned more than $10 million worth of securities of these and other government-sponsored housing finance companies. It’s the kind of conflict of interest violation that causes people to lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

Apparently, as the AP noted, this wasn’t a secret hidden from Snow; the information was included on his financial statements — which he now claims he didn’t read. <\/p>\n

Snow has been receiving periodic financial statements over the past year that showed he owned the mortgage company bonds, but Nichols said he never bothered to open them — conduct that Snow as head of the government’s financial literacy campaign would certainly frown upon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Upon learning of the problem, Snow explained yesterday that he quickly sold the securities and took in $10.4 million. A Treasury spokesperson said<\/a> the problem stemmed from “a misunderstanding or miscommunication” between Snow and a financial adviser. That’s quite a gaffe.<\/p>\n

Just the latest reason to question the myth of Republican “competence.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sure this isn’t the kind of news Treasury Secretary John Snow was hoping for upon releasing his first annual financial disclosure form. Oops. A red-faced Treasury Secretary John Snow, who has been going around the country preaching the importance of financial literacy, can now point to himself as a glaring example of what not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}