Following a loud outcry slamming the acceptability of Trump’s proposed Fed Board candidates, the White House has begun interviewing candidates to potentially replace Herman Cain and Stephen Moore, the president’s top economic adviser said. Speaking to reporters, Larry Kudlow said that former pizza company executive Herman Cain who famously ran unsuccessfully for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, must decide for himself whether to withdraw from consideration for a Fed job.
“At the end of the day, it will probably be up to Herman Cain if he wants to stay in that process or not,” Kudlow told reporters. “As far as we are concerned he is still in the process and it is proceeding.”
And, as Bloomberg notes, when asked whether the White House is interviewing anyone to potentially replace Cain and Moore, Kudlow said, “We are talking to a number of candidates. We always do.” Politico earlier reported that other candidates were being interviewed.
Setting the stage for his “graceful” bowing out from the appointment process, Cain said in a video posted on Facebook earlier this month that he faced a “cumbersome” vetting process for the Fed seat, suggesting he may be considering withdrawing. His campaign for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination ended in 2011 after he was accused of sexual harassment when he led the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s and of infidelity.
Cain’s nomination was effectively killed last week, when four Republican senators voiced their opposition to his candidacy, signaling there isn’t enough support to confirm Cain for the job. According to Bloomberg, Trump has privately said he knows Cain would have trouble getting confirmed but wants to wait for the FBI to finish its background check before he makes his decision on whether to formally nominate him, people familiar with the matter have said.
Asked last week whether Cain’s nomination was “safe,” Trump told reporters: “Herman will make that determination.”
Separately, Moore, who is a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, WSJ op-ed writer and long-time Trump supporter, has faced scrutiny over a dispute with the IRS, which claimed he owes more than $75,000 in taxes and other penalties related to deductions he claimed for child-support payments to his ex-wife.
“Steven Moore is in the process we support him,” Kudlow said. “We support Herman Cain. We will just let things play out in the vetting.”
Considering that Trump’s sole motivation behind the appointment of the two candidates is to stack the Fed board with dovish puppets, we reiterate our proposal that Trump nominate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for the Fed board…
If Trump is smart he will nominate AOC for Fed chair
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 22, 2019
… a move which will achieve two goals: first, MMT will be tried – unsuccessfully – in the next 2-4 years, resulting in soaring asset prices, hyperinflation and the collapse of the reserve currency, and second and more important, lead to the eventual and long overdue end of the Federal Reserve, which will at that point become the laughing stock of central banks around the board. Considering that Trump’s core campaign promise was to “clear out the DC Swamp”, we believes that he should seriously consider our suggestion.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Z80A2q Tyler Durden