Mr. Muzinich, a 39-year-old newcomer to Washington, has emerged as a central player in the Trump administration’s tax overhaul effort. The former investment banker and hedge fund manager is the Treasury point man on taxes, accompanying Mr. Mnuchin into “Big Six” meetings with top Republican lawmakers drafting the tax plan and laying out the administration’s positions on which taxes and deductions to cut or preserve.
.. He fits the mold of Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers, Mr. Mnuchin and Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, both of whom made a career on Wall Street. While not a Goldman Sachs alumnus, as they are, he brings an extensive background from the world of finance, having been a banker at Morgan Stanley and the president of Muzinich & Co., an international investment firm founded by his father.
.. His Wall Street brashness sometimes shines through when he gets into deal-making mode.
.. Mr. Muzinich, who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard and a law degree from Yale
.. In a 2007 Op-Ed article in The New York Times, Mr. Muzinich and a co-author, Eric Werker, called on Congress to offer tax credits to companies that build factories in developing countries and to offset the lost revenue with reductions in foreign aid.
.. “I think that he is pragmatic,” said Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, where Mr. Muzinich taught before joining the Treasury Department. “He’s looking for good policy solutions, not policy positions.”
.. Some economists have scoffed at Mr. Mnuchin’s promises that tax cuts would more than pay for themselves because of the robust economic growth he says they will create. The department came under fire for removing from its web site an economic study that contradicted the secretary’s analysis of the benefits of corporate tax cuts.
Mnuchin defends Trump’s comments on Charlottesville, rebuffs calls to resign
“While I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this, or the president, I feel compelled to let you know that the president in no way, shape or form believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways,” Mnuchin, who is Jewish, said in a statement released by the Treasury Department.
.. A letter signed by about 300 members of the Yale class of 1985 argued that it was Mnuchin’s “moral obligation” to resign because Trump had “declared himself a sympathizer with groups whose values are antithetical to those values we consider fundamental to our sacred honor as Americans.”
.. But Mnuchin argued that Trump’s comments were misrepresented and pointed to an earlier statement in which he urged Americans to “condemn all that hate stands for.”
“Our President deserves the opportunity to propose his agenda and to do so without the attempts by those who opposed him in the primaries, in the general election and beyond to distract the administration and the American people from these most important policy issues — jobs, economic growth and national security,” Mnuchin said.
Yale dean once championed cultural sensitivity. Then she called people ‘white trash’ on Yelp.
The posts, published over the course of the last few years, referred to customers as “white trash” and “low class folks” and to some employees as “barely educated morons.”
“If you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you!” Chu wrote in a review about a Japanese restaurant, which she said lacked authenticity but was perfect for “those low class folks who believe this is a real night out.”
.. “I guess if you were a white person who has no clue what mochi is, this would be fine for you.”
.. Others on Twitter pointed out an article Chu wrote for Inside Higher Ed regarding the importance of cultural sensitivity. One Twitter user said reading the article was “satisfyingly ironic.”
To understand today’s politics, look at Yale in the ’60s
We still live with this 1960s legacy — controversy has acquired a “razor’s edge,” and “venom and vehemence” have become fashionable.
.. The law, the dean said, “verbalized aggression,” taming it through an adversarial system that requires each party to listen to the other’s argument.
.. Wilkinson is a splendid anachronism, a gentleman raised by a father who “came to Saturday breakfast in his coat and tie” and who believed that “manners fortified man against his nature.”
.. He locates the genesis of today’s politics of reciprocal resentments in “the contempt with which the young elites of the Sixties dismissed the contributions of America’s working classes.”