From the DAILY BEAST:
NEW YORK – Anthony Scaramucci, the newly appointed White House Communications Director, has the hair and wardrobe of a stock-photo businessman, a nickname too absurd to stick with anyone else (“the Mooch”), and a fortune made from hawking high-cost, low-performance investments to ordinary people who don’t need them.
His appointment Friday may have been a surprise to White House staff. But Scaramucci landing a high-profile Trump administration job is what what a sociologist might call “overdetermined.”
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He was blocked from becoming the administration’s public liaison and had slotted into a minor role at the Ex-Im Bank. Trump reportedly loved him on T.V., and was smitten that Scaramucci forced CNN to retract a story that said Scaramucci was being investigated for a meeting with an official at a Russian investment fund.
Three journalists resigned in the wake of that retraction. And Papa Trump wasn’t the only one impressed. Don Jr. “loves Mooch,” a White House advisor told the Daily Beast. “All the kids do.”
…snip…
To understand the love, and really Scaramucci himself, you have to understand who he is on Wall Street. Like Trump, he is a press-seeking opportunist who created an outsized image for himself in his industry. Beyond the finance press, he gets called a financier and a banker, or a hedge fund manager. He is definitely not a hedge fund manager, though he probably doesn’t resent the implication of wealth and power that comes with such a description. Scaramucci is a salesman; or, even more specifically, a mascot for a whole class of salesmen. He’s a carnival barker for finance – looked down on for being just a bit too self-promotional, but broadly accepted and appreciated for the part he plays in defending the world of finance.
When then President Obama said in 2009 that banks that took taxpayer bailouts shouldn’t party in Las Vegas, Wall St. fumed and Scaramucci started hosting what is now a well-attended boondoggle there out of a sense of spite and promotional opportunity.
What Scaramucci was promoting, besides himself, was his company, Skybridge Capital. Skybridge is a hedge fund of funds. Scaramucci is in the hedge fund industry, but he’s not a hedge fund manager. To anyone outside the industry, that can sound like hairsplitting, but it’s the difference between selling rental cars and being the CEO of Ford. Scaramucci doesn’t make stock picks and he doesn’t trade. Skybridge takes investments in a bunch of different hedge funds, which are available only to institutions like pensions and endowments or exceedingly rich people, and repackages them so the merely ordinarily rich can invest in them. In effect, he’s taken investment funds other people have already made, combines them and resells them with lower minimum investments requirements.
…snip…
Funds of funds like Scaramucci’s make money taking these high-cost, underperforming investments and add another layer of fees. But there’s another twist: the fund of funds pitch is that hedge funds aren’t just for the super-rich, they’re for what the industry calls the “mass affluent.” That’s really what makes funds of funds such a grift: it takes an already expensive, under-performing Wall St product, makes it more expensive and sells it to more people. It’s hard to overstate how little real need there is for this.
…snip…
A bit of that anger popped up when Scaramucci talked about an Obama administration rule that sought, in a roundabout way, to steer people saving for retirement away from the sorts of high-cost investments that he, Scaramucci sells. The rule, which said that any broker advising a retirement saver had to act in their client’s best interest, is “like the Dred Scott decision,” Scaramucci said at a conference in October. He claimed afterwards in an email to a reporter that he made the comparison to the Supreme Court case denying African-Americans citizenship because “the left-leaning Department of Labor has made a decision to discriminate against a class of people who they deem to be adding no value.” Scaramucci promised that a Trump administration would undo the rule. Sure enough, that effort is underway.
As Scaramucci has veered further into the political arena, he’s confronted the same problems Trump has: not just to sand down those rhetorical rough edges but the need to create some separation from his business. In January, Scaramucci struck a deal to sell Skybridge for around $200 million to HNA Group, a Chinese airline, real estate and finance conglomerate, and RON Transatlantic, a U.S. investment firm. He will personally make about $100 million when the deal closes and because of his role in the Trump administration, he will be able to defer any capital gains taxes he’d normally pay from the sale. This is a tax advantage that exists for executive branch employees selling off assets to comply with ethics law
HNA, however, is a potentially problematic buyer. The company has been on a U.S. purchasing spree with recent investments in Hilton Hotels, CIT’s airplane leasing business, and chip-maker Ingram Micro, each of which was approved by U.S. regulators. But a New York Times investigation into HNA’s “murky ownership and a complex array of affiliates” showed a “systemic pattern” of executives striking deals and transferring ownership among friends and family.
Scaramucci’s sale was slated to be finalized by June 30. Now, spokesmen for Skybridge and HNA, and Reggie Love, a partner and vice president at RON Transatlantic and former aide to President Obama, tell the Daily Beast they expect the deal to be completed by the end of the summer.
…snip…
A source with knowledge of the transaction said there were no Chinese regulatory hurdles to the deal, but Bishop said he “would not be surprised though if Beijing is not comfortable with his deal now and may try to pressure HNA to find an out.”
Domestically, the deal is subject to approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. That committee should give Scaramucci a bit less trouble. It is headed by Treasury Secretary, and now Trump administration colleague, Steven Mnuchin.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
Model T. can’t help but put a sleaze bag with suspect credentials in place/ posts. Scaramucci sounds like a dirt bag and that’s putting it mildly Made his millions from money of folks that rusted him, I have no doubt that he’s been involved I shady dealings. Model T, must always appointment someone that he can identify with and this guy seems to fit the job exactly< He should be very good at lying.
He’s the Italian Bernie Madoff.
Yeh, I was wondering whether he is as crooked as Madoff. That really did enter my thoughts. He actually looks like a crook. Some crooks look the part. There is just something about their face and eyes that makes them look guilty/sleazy.
This one came out of The Sopranos central casting office.
He sure looks the part. I was reading some news and he has already put his foot in his mouth. He was quick on the rebound and found an easy out but I sure don’t believe it.
Thanks for the background info on tony the mooch. Seriously.
Now we know why he wanted this shitty job. It’s the tax break he gets when he unloads his shitty company. It will probably save him millions. This really is a crime family.
Miss you at Sunday Talk. 😥
scaramucci (italian for ‘scare much’). no tony the tiger, you little prick. you don’t scare much but like twitler & all his thugs, you do disgust much.
Thisbe over at Daily Kos posted a diary about commedia del’arte. One of the characters is named Scaramucia which means “Little Skirmisher.” I think that’s pretty close. The only way it would be closer would be if it translated into “aging Ken doll wax figure, slightly melted.”