Disclaimer: Just because I’m used to them, doesn’t mean I vote for them.
Blake Masters, 36, is the 2022 Arizona GOP nominee for U.S. senator. He wasn’t born stupid, as he has B.A. and J.D. degrees from Stanford, so his cerebral cortex must have been pithed at some point, perhaps as part of a GOP initiation ritual.
The pithed Blake Masters tweeted as follows:
This requires a little explanation. The Federal Reserve has a lot to do with stock market whims. For example, the DJIA index dropped 1,008 points on Friday after Fed chairman Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, said the Fed will keep cracking down on inflation. But while Fed policies and pronouncements often drive the stock market (either up or down), Fed policy generally follows in the wake of what’s happening in the economy, and there’s near-universal agreement the Fed was badly behind the curve on inflation.
But that doesn’t mean the Fed caused inflation. It simply was too slow to catch up with economic real-world effects caused by other forces. Inflation is global (which proves neither the Fed nor Biden caused it), and while Fed monetary policy and government fiscal policy (i.e., spending) contributed to it, other factors like a pandemic, an oil shortage caused by years of low oil prices and Russia’s war against Ukraine, a labor shortage (due to low birth rate, irrational immigration policies, retirements, pandemic deaths, a low prime-age labor participation rate), goods shortages (caused in large part by pandemic impacts in other countries), shipping bottlenecks (caused in part by years of low trucker wages), a housing shortage (caused by the subprime scandal that resulted from Republican laissez faire financial regulation), and climate change effects (on food prices).
The economy’s decades-long weak growth has been caused by, among other factors, weak productivity growth, wealthy inequality, increased debt (governmental, corporate, and household), and climate change effects.
Masters doesn’t mention any of this in his tweet. Instead he blames all of the economy’s ills on “female, Black, and gay” people in leadership roles at the Federal Reserve. Here’s a rundown on the 12 voting members of the Fed’s principal policymaking committee:
- Jerome Powell (bio here), chairman of board of governors — white guy, B.A. Princeton, J.D. Georgetown, Wall Street lawyer specializing in finance, banking, and M&A.
- Lael Brainard (bio here), vice chair — white female, B.A. Wesleyan, M.A. and Ph.D. Harvard, McKinsey consultant, business school professor, Brookings fellow, White House staff, president’s council of economic advisers, Treasury official.
- John Williams (bio here), vice chair for supervision — white guy, A.B. Berkeley, M.S. London School of Economics, Ph.D. Stanford, economist.
- James Bullard (bio here), St. Louis F.R. Bank president — white guy, B.A. and Ph.D. from Minnesota and Indiana colleges, economist.
- Esther George (bio here), Kansas City F.R. Bank president — white female, B.S. from Missouri college and M.B.A. from Stanford, banker.
- Susan Collins (bio here), Boston F.R. Bank president — black female of Jamaican descent, B.A. Harvard, Ph.D. MIT, economist, college professor, president’s council of economic advisers, Brookings fellow.
- Loretta Mester (bio here), Cleveland F.R. Bank president — white female, B.A. Barnard, M.A. and Ph.D. Princeton, economist, Federal Reserve careerist.
- Michael Barr (bio here), board of governors — white guy, B.A . and J.D. Yale, M.Phil. Oxford, Rhodes Scholar, Supreme Court clerk, Treasury official, presidential adviser, law professor.
- Michelle Bowman (bio here), board of governors — white female, B.A. and J.D. from Kansas colleges, federal official (various roles) and private banker (her family owns a Kansas bank).
- Lisa Cook (bio here), board of governors — black female beaten in childhood by segregationists, B.A. Spelman and Oxford, Ph.D. Berkeley, economist, Harvard and U. of Michigan professor, Treasury official, Hoover Institution fellow, president’s council of economic advisers, specialist in Russian economy.
- Philip Jefferson (bio here), board of governors — black guy, B.A. Vassar, Ph.D. Virginia, economist, college dean and professor.
- Christopher Waller (bio here), board of governors — white guy, B.S. from a Minnesota college, M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington State University, college professor.
Adding them up, 5 are white males, 4 are white females, 1 is a black male, and 2 are black females, 1 of whom was beaten in childhood by segregationists. As far as I can tell, none are gay, but the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank’s recently-appointed president is, and she’ll become a committee alternate in 2023 and a member in 2024.
As you can see, the Fed committee that sets interest rates is heavily peopled with Ivy League graduates, Ph.D.s, economists, and lawyers. Masters has Ivy League credentials and is a lawyer, too, but unlike him their intellects are still higher-functioning than that of a pithed frog.
This is all a red herring anyway, because Fed policymakers don’t create the economy, they can only try to fine-tune it. And because you generally can’t have low unemployment, fast growth, and low inflation all at the same time, the fine-tuning mostly consists of making tradeoffs. Right now, inflation would have to be the top priority of any Fed policy committee, no matter who was on it. A committee of dogs, burros, and chickens wouldn’t do things much differently.
Want lower gas prices? Drive less. Want more workers? Pass immigration reform in Congress. Want lower deficits? Reverse the billionaire tax cuts. There are things a U.S. senator can do to help the economy, none of which Masters will do if he’s elected to the Senate.
What you see here, of course, is racist and sexist stereotyping by someone on whom a good education was completely wasted.