It is amazing how adept Donald Trump is at identifying something important in the felt experience of the American public and then exploiting it for his own gain. So it has been with his suggestion that businessman and former presidential aspirant Herman Cain should be on the board of the US Federal Reserve. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse than pundit Stephen Moore, Mr Trump presents the Pizza King.
It is easy to dismiss the suggestion as the latest example of the president’s economic cluelessness — as four Republican senators have done this week, making it unlikely that Mr Cain will secure a seat on the Fed board.
But we shouldn’t be dismissive. It is true that Mr Cain has no idea how financial markets work. This is a man who, along with Trump nominee Mr Moore, wanted interest rates to rise right after the 2008 crisis. But the president’s defence of Mr Cain is that he is not a policy wonk, but rather a job creator who understands Main Street. Mr Trump cares only about packing the Fed with political lackeys. However, he has nevertheless hit on an important truth — that monetary policy over the past decade has done much more for the markets than the real economy.