Wasn't Mnuchin Supposed To Be Part Of The Reality-Based Community

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin may be an offspring of the Goldman Sachs "vampire squid". He may be a heartless criminal whose bank engaged in massive foreclosure fraud. He may be an inveterate liar, denying both the foreclosure fraud and lying to Congress about his investments and net worth. But he was supposed to be one of the members of the reality based community inside the Trump administration.

Yet you would find that hard to believe when you look at his wide-ranging interview with Axios the other day. Here are some of his comments on Donald Trump: "He's got perfect genes. He has incredible energy and he's unbelievably healthy...I think we should look at putting President Trump on the thousand dollar bill."

More importantly, this is what Mnuchin said about the threat of Artificial Intelligence on jobs in the future, "[I]t's not even on our radar screen.... 50-100 more years...I'm not worried at all...In fact I'm optimistic." Apparently, Mnuchin has not been on a factory floor in a decade or so and he clearly doesn't understand how many jobs have been lost to technology over the last 20 years. Just take a look at steel companies that re-emerged in the US after losing most of their jobs overseas. A mill that employed 4,000 decades ago now produces more steel with 400 workers and lots and lots of robots. Even in Mnuchin's own financial industry, technology has replaced thousands of workers. To not even have AI on your radar screen borders on willful ignorance.

Mnuchin ended his interview by hawking a movie of which he was executive producer, saying, "Well, I’m not allowed to promote anything that I’m involved in. So I just want to have the legal disclosure that you’ve asked me the question and I am not promoting any product. But you should send all your kids to ‘Lego Batman.'" It is a particular criminal mindset of the financial industry and elsewhere that saying you are not intending to break the law somehow absolves you when you do break the law. And despite Mnuchin's "legal disclosure", he was clearly violating ethics laws by promoting a product that he will benefit from.

And this is the guy who is going to be leading on tax reform.