Michael Flynn , Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, Rob Porter, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Jeff Sessions, Ryan Zinke, Jim Mattis, Tom Price, James Comey, Kirstjen Nielsen, H.R. McMaster, and twenty-seven other of Donald Trump’s “top of the line professionals” have been fired or resigned because they were unwilling to kowtow or break the law.
And, now, Trump has decided to pick another ‘top of the line professional’ (aka ‘sycophant’) who calls himself Stephen Moore, to occupy a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve System, also known as the “Fed”, the agency that provides central control of the U.S. money supply .
Moore, who has not earned a Ph.D. in economics and who has not authored or co-authored a peer-reviewed journal article, has a checkered past, like so many of Trump’s “best and most serious people”.
Moore was forced in 2004 to resign his position and give up his substantial salary as president of the Club for Growth, a political action committee that purportedly advocated tax reductions, for failing to register as a political committee and for failing to file accurate financial statements.
In 2012, Moore, an adviser to then-presidential candidate Herman Cain, thought it would be a ‘fabulous’ idea for Cain to run around the country shouting, “Nine, nine, nine!” to make voters think that a Cain presidency would reduce income, corporate, and sales taxes to a flat nine percent.
When it looked like Donald Trump’s ‘birther lie’ would propel him to political prominence, Stephen Moore realized that it was the right time to offer his services as an ‘economic adviser.’ Trump took Moore up on his offer and, instead of a bona fide economist, got a vociferous cheerleader.
Last September, Moore created an opinion piece, The Corporate Tax Cut is Paying for Itself, for the Wall Street Journal, that ignored three crucial facts: 1. Corporate tax payments declined by 31% at fiscal year-end, the steepest decline since the 2008 Great Recession, 2. Corporations were using taxpayer-subsidized billions to buy-back stocks, pay bonuses, and pay out additional dividends . . . not increase investments in expansions and hiring and, 3. The Corporate Tax Cut zeroed out taxes for multimillion dollar corporations, the wealthiest among us, increased taxes for working Americans, and pumped-up deficits to all-time-highs while adding an estimated $1.5 to $2 trillion to the national debt.
Moore and Mr. ‘Trickle-Down-Economics’, also known as Arthur Laffer co-wrote Trumponomics, a book that has been called “snake-oil economics” by Gregory Mankiw, head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and economics professor at Harvard University.
Last but not least, Stephen Moore, who’s forced the IRS to issue a lien to collect more than $75,000.00 in unpaid taxes and has refused to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support, has made it clear to any thinking person that he is fundamentally incapable of handling his own finances.
Even if you could forget Stephen Moore’s subjective Trump-sycophancy and every other failing, wouldn’t his inability to control his own finances, make you doubt his ability to control America’s money supply?
Huh?