Tag: Stephen Moore

President Trump has already won his argument for loosening Federal Reserve policy. While Fed Chair Jerome Powell can boast all he wants about the sanctity of the Fed’s independence, the fact is he and his FOMC followers knuckled under to the pressure Trump – and the financial markets – exerted on them to call a halt to any more interest rate increases for a while. Indeed, the discussion has since moved to cutting interest rates, a thought that seemed unimaginable just a few months ago.

Back in October, we were talking about how many rate increases we could expect this year. Now that any rate hikes are basically off the table for the foreseeable future, according to the Fed, the talk has shifted to a potential rate cut, possibly before the end of this year.

So why can’t Trump be satisfied with that? Instead, he’s sabotaging his chance to fill the two remaining seats on the Fed’s board of governors by publicly considering two people – Herman Cain and Stephen Moore – both of whom have way too much political baggage to hope to be confirmed, never mind actually nominated (remember, Cain was never formally nominated before he withdrew, nor has Moore).

While Fed independence is certainly a noble idea, the fact is that every person considered for the board has some political taint to them, expressed or not. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been nominated in the first place. We all need to realize that and not try to pretend otherwise. Jerome Powell was nominated by Trump because he’s a Republican, while his predecessor, Janet Yellen, was nominated by President Obama because she’s a Democrat. Simple and reasonable. Continue reading "Can't Get No Satisfaction" →

When I was in high school, one of my political science teachers explained to us that the political spectrum wasn’t so much a straight line – with the liberals on the left and the conservatives on the right – but was really shaped like a horseshoe, with the far left and the far right moving closer together at the outer fringes to the point where they almost meet. That the name-calling and the accusations – and the behavior – are most vehement at the outer edges doesn’t change the fact that the things they say they believe in are virtually indistinguishable from each other, only the labels are different.

President Trump’s plan to nominate Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve is a good example. These two men have undisputed conservative credentials and are also in sync with the president’s demand that the Fed adopt an easy money policy so as not to undermine U.S. economic and stock market gains. Not surprisingly, that makes them completely unacceptable to the left.
There’s been the obligatory hand-wringing and phony outrage by their opponents decrying that Trump “means to remake the 105-year-old agency into a partisan tool” (the Washington Post) and “trample over the Fed’s independence” (the Financial Times). We got the same blather when Trump nominated someone to the Supreme Court – which, we’ve been told, is completely independent and never, ever takes politics into consideration when it decides cases, and justices are never, ever chosen because of their perceived political views.

Already, even before they’ve been formally nominated by the White House, Trump’s opponents have started to dredge up all the dirty laundry they can about Cain – alleged sexual harassment eight years ago – and Moore – all the juicy details about his divorce. Whether or not those past sins will be enough to torpedo their nominations remains to be seen. But it’s likely their personal peccadillos – not their actual monetary and economic philosophies – will be the main focus of their nomination hearings, should they even get that far. Continue reading "Easy Money vs. Free Money - Choose Your Poison" →