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This is an interesting piece. But I'd say it implicitly gives Mnuchin far too much credit for the economic rescue of March, and also doesn't give the right take on who he is — the last oblivious but probably not fascist right-winger on the Trump team 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/business/steven-mnuchin-trump-economy.html
So, about that rescue: two crucial things kept the U.S. economy from going into total meltdown this spring. One was the Fed's extremely aggressive intervention to stabilize financial markets, which was basically Jerome Powell, not anyone in the Trump team 2/
The other was the CARES Act, which contained a bunch of stuff. All indications, however, are that the really crucial element was that $600 a week supplement to unemployment benefits. Those $1200 checks appear to mostly have been saved; it was UI that provided the stimulus 3/
And the $600 was, of course, a Democratic idea, which most Republicans hated. Mnuchin gets some credit for helping sell Trump on letting it get enacted anyway. But it's really Pelosi/Schumer policy 4/
So, where does Mnuchin fit? The Trump administration initially included a fair number of right-wingers with some independent status, who somehow didn't fully take on the nature of what they were joining. Gary Cohn; Rex Tillerson; in a different way, James Mattis 5/
They're all gone now, either fired or having left because they finally saw what was in front of their noses. Mnuchin is still there. I don't know whether he is just oblivious to who he's serving, or totally amoral — not mutually exclusive categories 6/
And for whatever reason, Trump hasn't replaced him with a personality-cult loyalist, which has turned Mnuchin into the relative voice of reason — not because he's smart, or even reasonable, but because look at who we're comparing him to 7/
And for what it's worth, whatever moderating influence he may have exerted is hard to see now, with benefits cut off and the admin's main policy idea — payroll tax deferment — looking like a sick joke 8/
Or to put it differently, in an administration that includes Barr and Pompeo, where Kushner is treated as a universal expert, Mnuchin doesn't look so bad. But in a normal administration he would look terrible 9/
As Sam Bell points out, Ron Wyden is most directly responsible for the $600 a week. Party leaders backed him, but credit where due 10/
