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This is an interesting piece. But I& #39;d say it implicitly gives Mnuchin far too much credit for the economic rescue of March, and also doesn& #39;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">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/3...
So, about that rescue: two crucial things kept the U.S. economy from going into total meltdown this spring. One was the Fed& #39;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& #39;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& #39;t fully take on the nature of what they were joining. Gary Cohn; Rex Tillerson; in a different way, James Mattis 5/
They& #39;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& #39;t know whether he is just oblivious to who he& #39;s serving, or totally amoral — not mutually exclusive categories 6/
And for whatever reason, Trump hasn& #39;t replaced him with a personality-cult loyalist, which has turned Mnuchin into the relative voice of reason — not because he& #39;s smart, or even reasonable, but because look at who we& #39;re comparing him to 7/
And for what it& #39;s worth, whatever moderating influence he may have exerted is hard to see now, with benefits cut off and the admin& #39;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& #39;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/
