This is a test. If the GOP lawmakers in the US Congress allow for the nomination of two highly unqualified but reliable presidential lackeys’ Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to become members of the Federal Reserve, they will have sunk to a new low. The only question is how low will they keep stooping by failing to represent the best interests of the American  peoples as they kow-tow to the republican President Trump’s demand for loyalty over competence, integrity and a non-partisan professionalism?

When will they tire of embarrassing themselves and this country?

Here is the rest of the story…

On April 10, 2019, the conservative columnist George Will penned the following op-ed piece, “The Cain and Moore nominations are two more tests for Republicans to fail”

Excerpts:

“In 1964, although there was scant chance that Americans would choose to have a third president in 14 months, Lyndon B. Johnson took no chances. The economy was sizzling, and in November Johnson would carry 44 states. Nevertheless, he wanted low interest rates, so he summoned to his Texas ranch Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr., the longest-serving chairman (1951-1970), for whom one of the Fed’s two Washington  buildings is now named. Johnson (this from “Capitalism in America: A History,” by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge) “gave [Martin] the once-over, shoving him around the room, yelling in his face, ‘Boys are dying in Vietnam and Bill Martin doesn’t care.’ ”

“In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon, already plotting reelection, summoned to the White House Arthur Burns, whom Nixon had nominated to become Fed chairman. According to John Ehrlichman’s memoir “Witness to Power,” Nixon said:”

“ ‘Arthur, I want you to come over and see me privately anytime. . . . I know there’s the myth of the autonomous Fed.’ . . . Nixon barked a quick laugh. . . . ‘And when you go up for confirmation some senator may ask you about your friendship with the president. Appearances are going to be important, so you can call Ehrlichman to get messages to me.’ ”

“Past instances of presidential pressure on the Fed are pertinent to President Trump’s hectoring of Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair he regrets having chosen. Trump’s public coarseness makes Johnson’s and Nixon’s private behavior seem comparatively couth. Fortunately, Powell seemingly regards the president’s clamor for low interest rates as white noise, unworthy of notice.”

“The Fed’s structure largely insulates it from political pressure, but structure can do only so much. Today’s controversy concerns Trump’s planned nominees to fill the two vacant seats on the Fed’s seven-member board of governors, Herman Cain and Stephen Moore. Whether their untidy sex lives are disqualifying, a sufficient disqualification is that both are notably partisan Trump acolytes and neither has satisfactory credentials or experience.”

STEPHEN MOORE/ HERMAN CAIN“The GOP’s descent into vaudeville began with the 2008 vice presidential nomination of Sarah Palin, it accelerated in 2011 when Cain was taken seriously as a presidential candidate, and it reached warp speed with the party’s capture by the man who takes Cain seriously as a maker of monetary policy. Cain’s certitude about his economic nostrums is inversely proportional to the study he has invested in the subject, which probably has involved less effort than he recently invested in organizing a PAC to promote Trump’s reelection. Cain’s and his nominator’s boundless confidence in their economic beliefs demonstrates the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It is named for two Cornell psychologists who in 1999 described the bias by which the lower a person’s intellectual ability, the more the person tends to overestimate it.”

“Some thoughtful people regret, as Cain does, the end of the gold standard, but they understand, as he does not, that fiat money is here to stay. Similarly, Moore might be right that the Fed would function better if it bound monetary policy to a prudent rule. There are, however, reasons to doubt that Moore knows what the rule should be (he certainly wrongly ascribes a particular rule to former Fed chairman Paul Volcker), and there are reasons to expect that the rule he would advocate at any moment would reflect his assessment not of macroeconomic facts but of partisan advantage.”

“The fact that presidents nominate judges with whose jurisprudence they agree does not of itself “politicize” courts, because most cases that courts consider are not directly related to partisan issues, and because the political fortunes of presidents and their parties are rarely immediately impacted by the court’s decisions the way the Fed’s economic decisions can impact them. Hence, the danger of Trump’s crude attempt to lower the Fed’s intellectual quotient while increasing the perception that the Fed is a political plaything. In a crisis like that of September 2008, the Fed influences not just the U.S. money supply but something that can suddenly be even more important — the world’s confidence supply. The Fed’s prestige is perishable and endangered by these two nominees”.

“Populism, democracy’s degenerate byproduct, incubates hostility to people possessing specialized knowledge (a.k.a “elites”), but senators can withhold consent from particularly egregious abuses of institutions that are particularly dependent on the perception of competence. The Cain and Moore nominations will be two more tests — of political courage, and of their institutional responsibility — for Senate Republicans to fail”.

Related Washington Post articles:

The Post’s View: Neither Herman Cain nor Stephen Moore should be on the Fed’s board

The Post’s View: Trump’s recommendation of Herman Cain is utterly reckless

Catherine Rampell: Herman Cain and Stephen Moore follow Trump’s lazy conspiracy theorizing  

Catherine Rampell: The op-ed that got Stephen Moore his Fed nomination is based on two major falsehoods