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Economists forecast Stephen Moore wouldn't be good for Fed post
President Trump's pick for a powerful post on the Federal Reserve Board is drawing mounting criticism from economists of all stripes. Trump said on Friday that he plans to nominate Stephen Moore, a campaign adviser and conservative pundit, to serve on the Fed's Board of Governors. "I have known Steve for a long time – and have no doubt he will be an outstanding choice!" Trump tweeted. The IRS is trying to collect more than $75,000 in back taxes from Moore, according to tax lien records first reported by The Guardian. Moore is disputing the tax.
Even before that news broke, the idea of installing Moore on the central bank's governing body had prompted a strong backlash. "Almost universally, economists have spoken out and said this is not a fit candidate for a board position," said William Luther, who directs the Sound Money Project at the American Institute for Economic Research. Moore has spent decades opining on economics — at the conservative Heritage Foundation, on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and on cable TV. "More than possibly any other economist in modern America, he has a track record of getting the big issues wrong," said Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan. "Not just occasionally but time after time."
Moore's credentials as a partisan player are well-established. He was one of the founders of the Club for Growth, which advocates limited government and low taxes. In 2012, Moore helped design a tax-cutting experiment in Kansas that blew a big hole in the state's budget but failed to produce the promised economic boom.
"There is this segment of economists who want to believe, whether the facts support them or not, that low-tax states will grow better than other states," said Miriam Pepper, who was editorial page editor at The Kansas City Star. "It certainly didn't work in Kansas. It was a disaster, so they've had to retreat."
Eventually Kansas lawmakers changed course and reversed the tax cuts. Nevertheless, Moore wrote an op-ed for the Star in 2014 defending the cuts and insisting that low-tax states outperform others. Only after the column was published did Pepper and her colleagues discover that Moore had his numbers wrong. When the paper ran a correction with the right numbers, the data didn't support Moore's argument.
"That kind of factual error is just unacceptable," Pepper said. "While he was the so-called top economist at Heritage, we decided we were finished with him."
Even before that news broke, the idea of installing Moore on the central bank's governing body had prompted a strong backlash. "Almost universally, economists have spoken out and said this is not a fit candidate for a board position," said William Luther, who directs the Sound Money Project at the American Institute for Economic Research. Moore has spent decades opining on economics — at the conservative Heritage Foundation, on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and on cable TV. "More than possibly any other economist in modern America, he has a track record of getting the big issues wrong," said Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan. "Not just occasionally but time after time."
Moore's credentials as a partisan player are well-established. He was one of the founders of the Club for Growth, which advocates limited government and low taxes. In 2012, Moore helped design a tax-cutting experiment in Kansas that blew a big hole in the state's budget but failed to produce the promised economic boom.
"There is this segment of economists who want to believe, whether the facts support them or not, that low-tax states will grow better than other states," said Miriam Pepper, who was editorial page editor at The Kansas City Star. "It certainly didn't work in Kansas. It was a disaster, so they've had to retreat."
Eventually Kansas lawmakers changed course and reversed the tax cuts. Nevertheless, Moore wrote an op-ed for the Star in 2014 defending the cuts and insisting that low-tax states outperform others. Only after the column was published did Pepper and her colleagues discover that Moore had his numbers wrong. When the paper ran a correction with the right numbers, the data didn't support Moore's argument.
"That kind of factual error is just unacceptable," Pepper said. "While he was the so-called top economist at Heritage, we decided we were finished with him."
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707312764/economists-forecast-stephen-moore-wouldnt-be-good-for-fed-post
When NPR does a piece like that on you, you must be really terrible for the job.