Trump Nominates Stephen Moore To The Fed. Who Is This Jagoff?

Some hack, is who.

  Donald Trump continues his tradition of choosing the Very Best People for important administration jobs, announcing today that he's picked rightwing activist and CNN commentator Stephen Moore to fill one of two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board. Moore appears to have won the position by vocally criticizing the fiscal policies of Fed chair Jerome Powell, a Deep State operative who hates Donald Trump, prosperity, and America, and who of course was appointed to his position by Donald Trump. Just don't remind Trump of that, OK, because you'd be lying and wrong.

So who is this jagoff? 

Moore is a former Trump campaign adviser who helped write its economic agenda and a close friend of [Larry] Kudlow. He was a senior economist on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, served on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and was an economic analyst for CNN.

Moore is also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and founded and presidented rightwing lobbying group the Club for Growth. The Wall Street Journal   notes Moore used to stick to fairly conventional conservative economic dogma, but as Donald Trump started yelling on Twitter at Powell's inflation-wary policies, Moore underwent a sort of conversion experience that brought his views conveniently in line with the Great Man's!

Mr. Moore for many years argued against the Fed's postcrisis policies to keep rates low and to buy long-term bonds to stimulate growth, warning that the measures would stoke high inflation. But he has recently said the Fed is making money too tight, echoing Mr. Trump's criticism of Mr. Powell and the Fed.

In March, Moore co-authored a piece at the   Journal   criticizing Powell's leadership of the Fed. It made a really good impression on Trump! Or rather, as Bloomberg Newsreports, on Moore's pal Larry Kudlow, who knows how to read. Trump may have been sufficiently impressed just with the hed, "The Fed Is a Threat to Growth." Once Larry Kudlow read it out loud to him, of course.

Trump's chief economic adviserLarry Kudlow showed the op-ed to Trump over lunch last week, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Trump remarked to Kudlow that he should have appointed Moore to be Fed chairman, the people said, and directed Kudlow to call Moore and gauge his interest in a board seat. This week, Trump called Moore himself and asked if he'd accept a nomination to the board.

Moore sure appears to have been doing all he could to get noticed by the great man; on a radio talk show back in December, when the stock market was plunging, Moore echoed Trump's tweeted plaints that the Fed was doing bad voodoo to the market:

"I believe the people on the Federal Reserve Board should be thrown out for economic malpractice" [...]

"Janet Yellen couldn't have been any worse than the guy he's got in there now," Moore said of Powell and his predecessor. "I always thought he was a bad choice. He's been a Fed guy for many years. Donald Trump wanted to drain the swamp. The Fed is the swamp."

And that is how you get a very important job in the Trump White House, hooray!

We would just like to take this opportunity to remind President Trump that we have always thought John McCain was the absolute worst guy ever and that we'd love to be ambassador to Japan. We even taught English there for a couple of years, so we're very qualified! For that matter, we'd be happy with a consular appointment, maybe near Akibahara. We could do, uh, trade outreach to anime fans.

The Wall Street Journal   notes Moore hasn't yet been formally nominated, just tweeted, and that he still has to get through the mandatory background checks before he can be confirmed, but what are the odds of a Trump nominee ever having a problem getting vetted? Also, there's this little gem about how Donald Trump came to have these vacancies to fill in the first place:

Nominations to the Fed's board are the primary way for the White House to influence central bank policy.  The 14-year terms are staggered, but due to retirements andbecause the Senate in 2016 did not act on two nominations by President Obama,Mr. Trump has had an unusual opportunity to remake the Fed's board.

Oh, well that's a heck of a coincidence, now isn't it?

As for the other opening on the Fed, Bloomberg reports Trump is still considering pizza cook and accused sexual harasser Herman Cain, because didn't we tell you this simulation is broken? Eh, probably not a problem for Senate confirmation; all Cain would have to do is cry, yell at Democrats, and claim he's the victim.

UPDATE: Oh, OK, and Moore only has amaster's degree in economics. Good enough, probably.

[ WSJ / Bloomberg ]

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