American Greed: Trump’s Economic Team Is A Who’s Who Of What’s Wrong
“I hear America singing,” Walt Whitman wrote, “the varied carols I hear.” Donald Trump hears America singing, too. But where Whitman heard men and women, masons and carpenters, Trump hears only the unvarying monotone of rich white males like himself.
Trump’s tone-deafness was in full effect last week, when he announced his team of economic advisers in advance of what is being billed as “a major economic address” in Detroit on Monday.
Trump’s team isn’t just monochromatic and male. At least four, and perhaps as many six, of the men are billionaires. They range in age from 50 to 74 – or, from “younger old white guy” to “older old white guy.”
Five team members are named Steve – which means that eight of them are not. For diversity, that will have to do.
There are only two economists on the team – and one of them believes in the flat tax.
But hedge funds are represented. So is fracking. And tobacco. And guns. And banking. And steel. And there’s the guy who mismanaged Chrysler before it was rescued by a government intervention.
Trump’s advisory team is a “suicide squad” for the American economy – which seems fitting, since a funder of the new “Suicide Squad” movie is on it, too.