(Once again, I've tried to keep the subject line as fair and balanced as the facts would allow...)
Swift Pushback on Stephen Moore, Trump's Latest Pick for the Fed
Stephen Moore drew swift and unusually pointed criticism after President Donald Trump picked him to be a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, with at least one prominent Republican economist calling on the Senate to block the appointment.
“He does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job,” Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, wrote in a blog post on Friday. “It is time for senators to do their job. Mr. Moore should not be confirmed.”
Moore’s selection is subject to Senate approval. He’s Trump’s sixth nomination to the nation’s monetary authority, which has a seven-seat board of governors that typically is filled with trained economists, former financial-industry executives and bank regulators. There are currently two vacant seats.
Two previous Trump nominees, Nellie Liang and Marvin Goodfriend, failed to advance in the Senate in 2018. Unlike Moore, neither faced accusations that they were unqualified.
Viewers of CNN may recognize Mr. Moore's picture...
He's a former Trump campaign advisor who for the past two years has appeared regularly as an uncritical Trump shill-minion on the cable news network...
Surprise surprise, once again Il Boobce places unquestioning fealty over any actual qualifications for the job...
He was also held in contempt of court for failing to pay $300K alimony, child support etc.; and also the IRS accuses him (NB innocent unless proven guilty - so allegedly) of owing $75K.
Sounds to me as if he is perfect to join the TTeam. Eminently qualified.
(Yet another "Should I post it here or in the 'You Just Can't Make This Shit Up' thread?" dilemma...)
Stephen Moore may be unqualified, but he's Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Paul Volker all rolled into one compared to this pick for a Fed seat:
Trump To Recommend Pizza Magnate Herman Cain For Fed Post
President Trump said he wants to appoint former Godfather's Pizza CEO and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board.
"I find Herman to be an outstanding person," Trump told reporters during an Oval Office appearance with the vice premier of China on Thursday. "I would think he would do very well there."
Cain, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, ran unsuccessfully for president during the 2012 election cycle. He achieved notoriety with his "9-9-9" tax plan, but dropped out of the race after allegations that he sexually harassed women and cheated on his wife — allegations Cain denied in 2011.
Trump suggested those old claims would not disqualify Cain from a Fed post.
"He's doing some pre-checking now and I would imagine he'd be in great shape," the president said.
Cain has criticized Federal Reserve policies in the past, suggesting in a 2012 Wall Street Journal column that the U.S. should return to the gold standard.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
ex-khobar Andy wrote:"He's like a brother to me," said Trump, of Cain.
We can only hope.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
As far as I know, the Federal Reserve — the world’s most important economic policy institution — doesn’t have an anthem. But if it were to adopt one now, the choice would be obvious: “Send In the Clowns.”
You see, the Fed’s governing board currently has two vacancies, and Donald Trump has proposed filling those vacancies with ludicrous hacks. If he succeeds, one of our few remaining havens of serious, nonpartisan policymaking will be on its way toward becoming as corrupt and dysfunctional as the rest of the Trump administration.
Stephen Moore and Herman Cain are, of course, completely unqualified — I say “of course” because their lack of qualifications is, paradoxically, a key qualification not just for Trump but for the G.O.P. in general.
There are plenty of genuine monetary experts with conservative political leanings, some of them quite partisan. But modern Republicans have shown consistent disdain for such experts, perhaps because of a sense that anyone with real expertise or an independent reputation might occasionally be tempted to take a stand on principle.
There’s no risk that either Moore or Cain will ever take such a stand. In fact, what seems to have recommended both men to Trump was their evident willingness to completely reverse their policy views when politically expedient.
Both were hard-money men during the Obama years, demanding higher interest rates despite very high unemployment. Both have now taken to berating the Fed for failing to print more money in the face of low unemployment — because that’s what Trump wants.
That said, there’s a difference between the two men.
I wrote about Moore a couple of weeks ago, noting that he has long been a prominent fixture in the conservative movement; he is, basically, a classic right-wing hack who tries (incompetently) to impersonate an economic expert. Cain, on the other hand, is a spam king whose business model involves making his email list available to direct marketers.
Put it this way: In recent years Moore has been out there predicting magical results from tax cuts, putting out fake economic numbers, and giving speeches to FreedomFest. At the same time, Cain has been offering a platform for peddlers of get-rich schemes and cures for erectile dysfunction. So it says something about what Trump wants that he apparently sees the two men as equally valuable allies.
What does Trump want? His attempted beclowning of the Fed follows, I’d argue, from the fact that his one major legislative success, the 2017 tax cut — which he predicted would be “rocket fuel” for the economy — has turned out to be a big fizzle, economically and, especially, politically.
It’s true that U.S. economic growth got a bump for two quarters last year, and Trumpists are still pretending to believe that we’ll have great growth for a decade. But at this point last year’s growth is looking like a brief and rapidly fading sugar high.
Meanwhile, the tax cut remains unpopular, partly because few people perceived personal benefits, partly because voters appear to be less concerned about paying too much than with the sense that the rich — the prime beneficiaries of the Trump cut — are paying too little.
Some leaders might see such disappointments as reasons to make a course correction. But this is Trump: When the going gets tough, he blames someone else. Everything would have been great, he insists, if the Fed hadn’t thwarted his plans.
There’s a good argument to be made that the Fed misjudged the economy’s strength, that it raised interest rates too fast and that the economy would be doing somewhat better if it hadn’t. In fact, it’s an argument I agree with.
But that’s not what Trump is saying. He wants the Fed to act as if we were still in a deep depression; he wants it both to cut rates and to resume the emergency policies it pursued — and he denounced — when we had more than twice as much unemployment as we do today. This would, he insists, turn the economy into the “rocket ship” he originally promised.
You don’t have to be a gold bug or even an inflation hawk to see these demands as deeply irresponsible. Indeed, they sound a lot like the “macroeconomic populism” that has repeatedly led to economic disaster in Latin America, with Venezuela the latest example.
Running the printing presses to fight a depression, as the Fed did after the financial crisis, is prudent and sensible; running them because you refuse to accept the reality that your policies aren’t delivering an economic miracle is different, and always ends badly.
Now, even putting both Moore and Cain on the Fed board probably wouldn’t be enough to push America over the monetary edge. And so far, markets don’t seem worried about the potential for runaway inflation.
But maybe investors should be worried, at least a bit, by the spectacle of a president who would rather appoint hacks and debase the Fed’s integrity than admit that his policies aren’t working as promised. U.S. policymaking is looking ever more like that of a corrupt third-world regime. And that is bound, sooner or later, to have consequences.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
Are there any Trump appointees who aren't completely batshit crazy?
Yes.
They were the ones who had the good sense to tell him "no" when asked and refused to board the train wreck that is Trump's administration. -"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?
Moore argued during the 2016 debate that late entry into the workforce was a major problem, saying barriers to young people entering the workforce should be limited.
“Young people are starting to enter the workforce at a later age,” he said. “The big decline in labor force participation has been people between the ages of 16 and 30, and that’s highly problematic . . . The most damaging thing we can do right now to the U.S. economy is create further barriers to young people getting in the work force,” he later added.
Trump last month floated Moore, who served as an adviser to his 2016 presidential campaign, as a possible nominee for the Federal Reserve Board. Since then, many of Moore's previous statements, including an opinion piece he wrote advocating against the presence of women in sports, have come under scrutiny along with his past criticism of the board
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
