Amid the Mueller/Barr news, the story of Trump’s nomination of Stephen Moore to be a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve is getting buried. This is a shame since this is a hugely consequential position, one of the most important appointments a president can make. Also, Moore is ridiculously unfit for the job.
This is a position that usually goes to trained economists. Moore only has an MA in economics and is best known as an over-excitable pundit. With Arthur Laffer, he’s co-author of the book Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy. Greg Mankiw, a conservative economist and Harvard professor, is frank, saying Moore “does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job.”
Moore’s own words are hardly re-assuring. “I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions,” Moore told Bloomberg Television. “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.”
