Snow on loss: ‘just one of those things’

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary John Snow, talking about an error of more than $10 million in his investment portfolio that caused him to lose nearly half a million dollars, said “mistakes get made.”

Snow made the remarks Thursday in a taped interview on KMOX radio in St. Louis. His comments come a week after the Treasury Department released the information along with Snow’s financial disclosure statement, which top government officials and members of Congress are required to file each year.

An investment adviser last year had purchased $10.87 million in bonds held by government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, rather than buying U.S. Treasury securities as instructed to do. When the mistake was discovered last month, Snow had ordered the bond holdings sold, incurring a loss of $478,000.

Snow, who took the Treasury post last February after heading up railroad giant CSX Corp., had told his adviser to invest in Treasury bonds to avoid any conflict of interest. Snow, who has pressed for tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises, didn’t catch it sooner because he didn’t read his financial statements for more than a year.

“As soon as we discovered the mistake, we corrected it,” he said in the radio interview. “It’s just one of those things that happens from time to time and it’s now been rectified.”

Snow’s financial disclosure form, on which assets are reported in broad ranges, estimates he was worth between $43 million and $128 million last year.