Like nearly everything he touches, Donald Trump is now in the process of thoroughly debasing the Federal Reserve, one of the few still-respected institutions left in Washington.

Trump’s assault on the Fed began last fall when he started jawboning Jerome Powell, his own pick for Fed chairman, into curtailing Powell’s well-articulated plan to raise short-term interest rates through 2019, after a decade when his two predecessors kept them artificially low. Powell’s words had spooked the debt and equity markets—taking some of the air out of those balloons, just as a Fed chairman should do—at the end of 2018, and Trump didn’t like it. (He views the financial markets as a daily referendum on his success as president.) Trump reportedly told his advisers that Powell was going to “turn me into Hoover,” a reference, of course, to Herbert Hoover, the president who presided over the country’s fall into the Great Depression. Now, Trump has doubled down on denigrating the Central Bank through his nomination of Stephen Moore, the former Wall Street Journal editorial board member, to the Fed’s board of governors.

Moore, like Larry Kudlow, Trump’s national economic adviser, is one of the architects—along with economist Arthur Laffer—of the infamous Reagan-era policies of so-called supply-side economics, or what George H. W. Bush called “voodoo” economics. The idea is that if you cut taxes on the rich, and put even more money in their pockets, it will “trickle down” to the poor saps stuck in the middle and lower classes. The idea didn’t work for Reagan, and it hasn’t worked for Trump, despite Trump’s claims that his 2018 tax law did just that.

But Moore is a true believer, and that’s what Trump seems to need around him these days. Moore once—seriously—suggested that Trump deserved the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics and, again seriously, said he thought Trump looked like “a football player, in incredible, great shape.” It’s so glaring, this tuchis-licking, that on Tuesday Moore tried a different tack. “I don’t think anybody can reasonably say I am a sycophant for Trump, because I’m not,” Moore told The New York Times.

Both Kudlow and Moore were economic advisers to Trump during the 2016 campaign. Kudlow got his reward when he was named to succeed Gary Cohn in the White House and Moore is eager to get his reward by serving on the board of the Fed. If his nomination goes through, he’ll partly have Kudlow to thank. On March 13, Moore co-authored a Wall Street Journal commentary piece that echoed Trump’s view that Powell’s interest-rate hikes were preventing the U.S. economy from growing at the annual rate of 3 percent to 4 percent that it is “positioned” to grow at, thanks to Trump’s economic policies of tax cuts, regulatory reform, and his tough stance on trade with China. “Skeptics in and out of the Fed still think sustained 3% to 4% growth is out of reach,” he wrote. “Nonsense.” Kudlow showed the column to Trump, who then offered Moore the Fed job, which requires Senate confirmation.

The condemnation was swift, even from G.O.P quarters. “He does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job,” Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, wrote in a blog post last Friday. “It is time for senators to do their job. Mr. Moore should not be confirmed.” Bruce Bartlett, another G.O.P. economist, tweeted that Moore knows “absolutely nothing about the Federal Reserve or monetary policy.” Washington Post economics columnist Charlotte Rampell started tweeting up a storm against his nomination. “I’ve been wondering if Wall Street would kick up a fuss about Moore,” she wrote on Wednesday, linking to a Politico story. “They might like dovish policy but perhaps not at the expense of destroying the Fed’s credibility on price stability for the rest of time.”

For the record, my Wall Street sources tell me they think the nomination of Moore is inane and infuriating but isn’t one to lose sleep over. “He’ll just be one vote out of seven,” one senior banker told me, “and a minority vote at that.” The problem, of course, is that the position is for a 14-year term. If he were confirmed, the 59-year-old Moore—and his nutty views—could be around for a long time.

Even Moore has a sense that he’s unqualified for the job. He told Bloomberg recently that he may not have a Phd in economics but he’s been around a long time and he knows how the game is played. “I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions,” Moore said. “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.” Nothing like hitting ground running.

Over the years, I have been asked to debate Moore on cable television, mostly on CNN. They are generally painful intellectual encounters because, while neither of us is an economist—Moore has a master’s degree in economics from George Mason University; I have an M.B.A. from Columbia and was a Wall Street banker for 17 years—our politics, and view of the dismal science, are diametrically opposed. The only thing that made it remotely tolerable was the fact that Moore always seemed to join the conversations from some remote location, far from Don Lemon’s set in New York City.

In December 2017, I was asked to debate Moore again, this time about the big tax-cut bill that Trump was about to sign into law. I didn’t want to go on with Moore again; it’s just so unpleasant, listening to him and his senseless diatribes about the virtues of “trickle-down” economics.

But, the CNN producer fairly begged me, “Please, Bill. No one else will go on with the guy.”

Predictably, our appearance together that night was a disaster, although it might have made for good television. He started by saying that the tax law would reduce taxes for 90 percent of Americans. I objected strenuously. “Moore shouldn't be allowed to do this anymore,” I said. “He's been trying to do this for 35 years, talking about trickle-down economics for 25 years. He shouldn't be allowed to do this anymore.”

I went on: “This isn’t a tax cut for 90 percent of the Americans. This is a tax increase for anybody who makes money paying ordinary income taxes. Maybe if you pay capital gains taxes, maybe like Donald Trump if you have a lot of partnership income, this could be a tax cut. But from both people who get a paycheck who have a W-2, this would be a tax increase.” (This supposition has proved correct, as more and more Americans are finding that either their expected refunds are disappearing or that they are paying more in federal income taxes.)

From there, we debated the effect the tax cut would have on people in states such as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Illinois—states with high state and local taxes—where a once-unlimited deduction for state and local taxes was capped at $10,000 annually by the new law. I argued that the cap would hurt ordinary Americans in those states, forcing them to pay more in federal taxes since the deduction for state and local taxes would be capped. Moore argued that only the very rich would suffer from the cap. But, I countered, capping the deduction for state and local taxes would lower the value of people’s homes—the biggest source of most people’s wealth—by making it less desirable to live in the high-tax states. “The biggest component of state and local taxes are property taxes,” I said. “People are going to feel poorer as a result of having to pay more in taxes as a result of their property.”

Lemon gave the penultimate word to Moore. “I think when Americans see how this economy continues to expand, I'm expecting 4 percent growth next year, which would be unbelievably strong given what we've had for the last 10 years,” he said. “And when people actually see their paychecks increase another $50 or $100, you know, for middle class people, every paycheck, I think they're going to be very happy. And I think Republicans did a good thing for the country but also a politically smart thing for the party today and tomorrow.”

For the record, G.D.P. growth in 2018 was around 3 percent; it is forecast at around 2.4 percent this year. I’m still waiting to hear the roar of the crowd from all the middle-class people jumping up and down with excitement because their biweekly paychecks increased $50, if that even happened.

— Why is Trump obsessed with Beto O’Rourke?

— The self-driving techpocalypse: the Boeing tragedy is just the beginning

— Inside the Disney-Fox Freakout

— Beto vs. Biden: who is Obama’s true heir apparent?

— Cover story: Riding around with Beto O’Rourke as he comes to grips with a presidential run

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.