Expected Federal Reserve board nominee Stephen Moore said Sunday that he couldn’t talk about what the Fed should do, but then suggested the central bank should cut interest rates.
“I’m not going to comment and that’s just because of my situation under nomination,” Moore told “The Cats Roundtable” host John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York. “I will say this, that I’ve written publicly before this all came about that I think the Fed is a little bit too tight right now.”
He went on to say that “there is a case to be made possibly for a rate decrease.”
President Trump told reporters in late March that Moore would be one of his two nominees for the board. The White House said an official announcement would come at a later date. CNN, which had booked Moore regularly as a voice of the administration having worked on Trump’s campaign, cut ties with him as a contributor once his name for the post was made public.
The news prompted criticism from the left, as Moore — who had been an economic adviser for the president’s 2016 campaign — was viewed as too partisan and too unconventional of a choice.
Like Trump, Moore had been angered by the Federal Reserve’s decision to increase interest rates in December. “I was furious — and Trump was furious too. I just thought that the December rate increase was inexplicable,” he told the New York Times in March.
Moore had even called on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to resign.
He struck a more reasoned tone Sunday.
“When you get a situation where you get a pro-growth policy, where you get all this global demand for dollars at the same time the Fed is raising interest rates and pulling dollars out of the economy, that can cause a slight deflation,” Moore said. “And I’m a little worried about that.”
“When I get over there I’m going to be someone who wants stable prices,” he continued. “That’s the best the Fed can do is create a situation where a dollar today is worth what a dollar will be worth two years from now … five years from now and 10 years from now,” he said, making an argument for an interest rate decrease.
Moore also mentioned how former Godfather’s CEO and 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain will also likely be nominated for the Federal Reserve board. “I can’t think of anyone better than Herman,” Moore said, calling the businessman-turned-politician a “superstar.” Like Trump, Moore had advised Cain’s campaign.
Making him yet another controversial choice for the Fed, Cain’s presidential ambitions were derailed by sexual harassment allegations, which he denied.
Trump’s National Economic Director Larry Kudlow defended both men Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I mean, first of all, they’re both very smart people,” Kudlow said. Focusing on Cain, Kudlow pointed to his experience on the Kansas City Federal Reserve and called him a “very successful entrepreneur.”
“He is intimately acquainted with Federal Reserve operations and policy issues,” Kudlow argued. “So I think these criticisms are very unfair.”
