Lisa D. Cook, a Michigan State University economics professor, has been nominated by President Biden for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.
Prof. Cook (bio here; IMF profile here), daughter of a hospital chaplain and college professor, is a very smart woman with degrees from Oxford University and U.C. Berkeley in international relations and economics.
Her background includes studying the Russian economy and consulting with African nations on banking reforms and economic development. She’s been a visiting professor at Harvard, and served on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
She also bears a scar above her right eye inflicted in nursery school by white kids who called her the “n” word. And now, she’s the target of vicious racist attacks from conservatives (see story here).
For example, Peter Navarro (profile here), a diehard Trumper who’s promoted quack remedies for Covid-19 and Trump’s election lies, told the disreputable rightwing blog Daily Caller, “Professor Cook is more qualified to coach an NFL team than manage what may be a looming collapse of our economy from a perch at the Fed.”
The U.S. economy is not collapsing; it grew at a blistering 6.9% rate in the 4th quarter of 2021, the unemployment rate is the lowest in decades, and the stock market has been at all-time highs.
Certainly, there are serious issues to consider in confirming any Federal Reserve nominee. For the last dozen years, the Fed has exerted great influence on the economy, for better or worse. It’s now at an inflection point where its stimulative policies are colliding with inflation-fighting imperatives. (The Fed has tentatively begun to shift to the latter.) The policy issues warrant examination, although it’s unlikely Republicans and Democrats will agree on those.
But it would be nice if Republicans would consider Ms. Cook’s nomination on the basis of her credentials, experience, intelligence, and knowledge. Instead, they’ve labeled her “radical” merely because she’s a Democrat and might not agree with their policy ideas; and worse, all they want to talk about (in patronizing and demeaning ways) is the fact she’s a black woman.
When her nomination is considered by the Senate, she should be taken seriously and they should not, if they can’t do any better than that.