Mr. 9-9-9 himself.
By ROBYN BECK/AFP/GettyImages.
No one has ever accused Donald Trump of hiring qualified, competent, law-abiding individuals. His Energy secretary only learned what the Energy Department did after he accepted the nomination for the job. His Education secretary lacks even the most basic understanding of education policy. His Housing and Urban Development secretary thinks “poverty is a state of mind” and, as of last September, had hired at least 24 people with zero housing-policy experience. His 10-day Communications director didn’t think to tell a reporter that a conversation in which he accused a colleague of auto-fellatio was off the record. His anti-smoking guru resigned after she was caught trading tobacco stocks. His daughter and son-in-law can’t do anything right, and have in fact been (successfully!) targeted by foreign governments based on their lack of experience. Two of his top campaign managers have been indicted by the special counsel’s office. So, really, it was only a matter of time before this happened:
Herman Cain, the former pizza company executive who ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, is being considered by President Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board.
Since 2012 was approximately 87 lifetimes ago in Trump years, you may need a refresher on Cain. The following is a list of his career highlights that presumably convinced Trump he should be given a job guiding the U.S.’s monetary policy:
- 9-9-9: While running for president, Cain famously introduced a tax proposal called the 9-9-9 plan, which would have eliminated the tax system entirely and replaced it with a 9 percent personal income tax, a 9 percent corporate income tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. Economists called it “The most massively regressive redistribution of taxes ever seriously considered” and warned that it would be “a huge tax increase on most Americans, but a huge tax cut on the wealthy.” (Paul Ryan and Larry Kudlow were, of course, big fans.) Cain produced a six-minute video called 9-9-9 the Movie: Slaying the Tax Monster, but was apparently less receptive to IRL inquiries:
- Uzbekistan: There is no question in our minds that Trump loved this 2011 exchange between Cain and conservative reporter David Brody:
Brody: Are you ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions that are coming from the media and others on foreign policy? Like, who’s the president of Uzbekistan?
Cain: I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?
–Gold: As of his presidential run, Cain favored a return to the gold standard, and wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal: “A gold standard is to the moochers and looters in government what sunlight and garlic are to vampires.”
- Pizza: Cain was the chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza. Trump obviously believes this makes Cain more qualified for the job than some loser PhD.
–Sexual harassment: During Cain’s run for office, Politico reported that at least two female employees at the National Restaurant Association received financial settlements after making sexual harassment claims against Cain when he served as the group’s president. Cain vacillated between saying he was “unaware of any sort of settlement,” to admitting that they happened and he knew about them, to calling the whole thing a “witch hunt,” a line that undoubtedly scored him points with the Big Guy, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 22 separate women and has made “witch hunt” his catchphrase of choice.
Shockingly for this administration, Cain does have some relevant work experience, having served as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1992 to 1996, though, as The Washington Post notes, “those posts are often given to business executives and community leaders who serve to inform top Fed officials about what they are seeing in the labor market and economy more broadly.” Or, as Dartmouth College economics professor Danny Blanchflower, who previously sat on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, put it:
One potential factor that could derail Cain’s candidacy? When he served on the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, he was known as an inflation hawk, which is the exact opposite of what Trump wants from the Fed, as exemplified by the fact that his handpicked Fed chair, Jerome Powell, is this close to waking up with a horse’s head in his bed. Still, it’s entirely possible, as New York’s Josh Barro points out, that “Trump assumes Cain has no fixed ideology and would do whatever he wants.” Anyway, if this Cain thing doesn’t work out, Jose Canseco is presumably still interested in the gig!
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This story was originally published by Vanity Fair
via USAHint.com
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