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Stephen Moore – Who Can’t Handle Erin Burnett – Incurs Terrible Wrath Of Elizabeth Warren
As you've probably noticed over the past couple of days, the novelty/comedic value attached to Stephen Moore's Fed nomination has worn off and given way to incredulity, irritation, frustration and, in some circles, outright disgust.
Initially, Trump's decision to (potentially) nominate Moore was seen as just the latest manifestation of the president's penchant for simple-mindedness and vulnerability to being duped by flattery into giving laughably unqualified people important jobs.
Gradually,
Moore has been on Real Time on many occasions. He has this smirk on his face every time he talks as if to say, “This is pure bullshit folks.” The word idiot fits him perfectly. And speaking of Real Time, Maher, although I think he means well, is getting old. Many of his ideas are quite reactionary and not well researched.
The sad thing is that the FED doesn’t know what money is. But Greenspan admitted as much long ago. There is a big difference between admitting lack of knowledge and acting like a lot of crazy things are true. These are dangerous times because political forces beyond Moore could cripple our economy. In fact it seems true that they already are doing just that. The markets will price that when liquidity normalizes.
I mean, if you are going to deregulate and subsidize the banks, print money, buy crap assets to blow up the balance sheet, run a constant, political pro-cyclical interest rate policy that suppresses savers, abides bubbles in housing and asset inflation, destroys price discovery, and polarizes wealth, at least do so with the decency of having a PhD in Economics.
Harvey, this is yet another silly comment from you parroting the same old line that could have been pulled directly from a blog run by someone selling gold coins and railing against the “establishment”. There’s no nuance here, Harvey. This ain’t one of those cases were you’re going to be able to play “gotcha” with me or any other commenters on here. Stephen Moore is a stone, cold idiot and always has been. If you are willing to defend him (implicitly or explicitly) then either 1) you don’t know anything about Stephen Moore, a situation I suggest you remedy post haste in order to get a handle on this discussion, or 2) you’re not as smart as you seem.
I’ll let you explain which one of those two things is the case or, more likely, respond with a long-winded diatribe about how you weren’t actually defending Stephen Moore, but rather simply reiterating your (largely misguided) opinion that central banks are somehow unaware of the consequences of their policies and/or haven’t conducted a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether the side effects are worth it in their estimation.
Knock yourself out.
I am sure you have access to far, far more financial information than I do, and yet you lack a lot of imagination – even for a person whose financial analysis is colored by political science. Why are you binary? If I do not support the Fed buying mortgage-backed securities, I must therefore support the gold standard or something? Huzzah? You know, there are a spectrum of options in between, right? Economics isn’t my fastball, but I am aware of the Austrian school, yes, and also monetary theory and neo-Marxism and Keynesianism and neoliberalism and maybe a couple of other things besides.
Is Stephen Moore an idiot? Yeah. Is he a Trump sycophant, the absolute worst kind of American? Yes. Yes, he is. But policy matters, and substantively, there will be a dime’s width of difference between a Fed Board composed of idiotic political appointees and a Fed Board composed of political appointees with Economics doctorates. Rates will be too low for too long. Bubbles will grow in housing and stocks. Money will be created to purchase junk assets and finance government debt used to pay for kit we don’t need (plus goon squads and kiddie kennels) and the Fed will panic with every 5% downturn in the NASDAQ. The power or idiocy of the verbiage used to justify all this is wholly irrelevant.
“I am sure you have access to far, far more financial information than I do.”
Right.
“Economics isn’t my fastball”
Ok.
Also this: “But policy matters, and substantively, there will be a dime’s width of difference between a Fed Board composed of idiotic political appointees and a Fed Board composed of political appointees with Economics doctorates.”…. is just wrong. Go and look at what Stephen Moore suggested the Fed do during the Obama administration, for instance. Or better yet, read Elizabeth Warren’s letter.
I’m not going to respond to your comments anymore Harvey. Frankly, your obsession with a narrative that you pretty clearly grabbed from silly websites (and yes, Austrian school websites in many cases qualify as profoundly silly places), suggests you are predisposed to buying into antiquated theories that, irrespective of their “fundamental” soundness or ostensible appeals to common sense, aren’t in operation, will never (ever, ever, ever) be adopted again in any broad sense, and are thus wholly irrelevant.
I may be completely wrong about this, but I would just emphasize for the umpteenth time that the things you say sound like they are copy/pasted from some of the worst kinds of financial blogs and/or from the silliest of silly financial Twitter feeds. Again, you may not read any other blogs and you may not even have Twitter, and in that case I suppose you just share a natural affinity with those types of portals/accounts, but if I am any semblance of correct, you should note that none of those blogs/twitter handles/etc. are taken any semblance of serious by anyone of any consequence and there are really – really – good reasons for that blanket dismissal beyond the reasons that you might be familiar with. Again, you may be wholly unaware of what I mean there, but I personally guarantee you that other readers who read this response of mine know precisely what I’m talking about.
None of that is to say that post-crisis monetary policy shouldn’t be criticized/critiqued etc., and it’s certainly not to suggest that price discovery hasn’t been impaired or that inequality hasn’t been perpetuated. But this ridiculous narrative where PhD economists are painted as villains in some kind of international financial soap opera/drama/crime thriller is so far removed from reality that I struggle to find the right words to communicate how ridiculous it is.
That cabal of super serious, important and relevant people, the ones the ‘other readers’ know about, do they consider the President of the United States as a person of consequence? Because as much as they may laugh and snicker at Stephen Moore, Trump and 51 Republicans have the power to appoint Moore and none of them do. And if Moore is forced to withdraw himself from consideration, what caliber of person do you think Trump is going to nominate to replace him?
You are Straw Man-ing my positions. I think the Fed sucks at monetary policy. I think rates are too low, banks should not have been capitalized with zero interest loans, the bank stress tests are too weak, that the Fed should not buy MBS, and that the stock market is overpriced and too reliant on dovish Fed policy, and buying trillions in Treasuries has killed the bond markets. I guess this makes me some sort of tinfoil hat-wearing whackadoo or something. Our future is Europe, and Japan beyond that, and I disagree with that path and reserve my right to do so.
Lol Moore’s interview. It’s like he doesn’t understand the core concepts of inflation, floating currency, or even a Fed funds rate.
Cause Fed doesn’t look at changes in prices of commodities (goods?) to make informed decisions on rates in order to move the USD. Yep, we really need a peg to do that, right Moore?!