Trump’s Cabinet: ‘Draining the swamp’ or diving right in?

Mr Trump’s choice as deputy at the Commerce Department, Todd Ricketts, is the son of a billionaire and the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball club and Steven Mnuchin, who Mr Trump hopes will be his Treasury Secretary, is a former Goldman Sachs executive, hedge fund executive and Hollywood financier.

Former Goldman Sachs partner Steve Mnuchin will be nominated as Treasury secretary, and billionaire businessman Wilbur Ross was selected as Commerce secretary.

Mnuchin told CNBC Tuesday that as secretary of the treasury, tax reform would be his top priority, promising the largest tax overhaul since the Reagan administration.

He also said the administration would cap mortgage interest deductibility but would allow for some deductions.

The proposed changes also include cutting the nation’s 35% top business tax rate to 15%, along with an effort to encourage repatriation of the estimated $1 trillion that large US corporations hold in foreign subsidiaries to avoid the domestic tax bite.

And if this trend continues, Trump could have the wealthiest administration in modern USA history.

Commerce Secretary nominee Ross served as Trump’s top economic advisor on trade policy.

What about these claims from Mnuchin and Ross that their policies will boost the US growth rate to between 3 percent and 4 percent a year – about twice what it is now.

“We’ll still let you do charities but there’ll be other deductions that will be absolutely limited”, Mnuchin said. He also was involved deeply in developing the president-elect’s tax proposals, which could deliver as much as $6 trillion in tax reductions over 10 years, but might also contribute to much larger budget deficits.

The more credible accusation against Trump is not that he is anti-Semitic, but that he and his campaign have trafficked in language and conspiracy theories that would immediately be understood by anti-Semites as signaling Jewish villainy – and galvanize them to back the campaign.

But in his remarks this morning, Paulson, it seems, has developed confidence in the incoming president and his treasury secretary to deal with a troubled economy.

But I think Mnuchin and Ross would say the stock market is mostly responding positively to the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s economic plan – his huge tax-cut proposal.

He also said that he hoped the taxes changes would be one of the main instigators of improved economic growth over the next decade. In Washington, Vice President-elect Mike Pence worked on alliances with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, as, in NY, team Trump offered more Cabinet nominees for Congress to consider, including the highest ranking yet, financier Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary. “We’re hoping it results in an overall tax decrease”.

“We are witnessing the wholesale takeover of government by an extremist faction of the corporate class”, said Robert Weissman, president of public policy group Public Citizen. This is a middle-income tax cut.