https://truthout.org/articles/trump-adviser-says-human-capital-stock-should-get-back-to-work/
Truthout said:As the United States trembles on the verge of 100,000 COVID deaths and nearly 1.7 million confirmed infections — a “badge of honor” in the fetid mind of Donald Trump — the question of how we got to this horrific place stands out like a pustule on the skin of the nation. Trump has wielded outsize influence in driving this ship onto the reef, to be sure, but he has not acted alone.
Enter Kevin Hassett, current senior adviser and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for the White House. Men like Hassett pollute the Trump administration from the basement to the roof deck, and they have done much to turn a terrible situation into a nigh-inescapable nightmare.
Hassett has spent the last 21 years of his career being wrong. A creature of the American Enterprise Institute, the far right think tank that sought a more violent U.S. foreign policy by way of a “new Pearl Harbor” on the eve of September 11, Hassett made a name for himself by writing a book in 1999 predicting a huge upswing in the stock market. The dot-com bubble burst before the ink on his pages was dry, and the market cratered accordingly. So much for “Dow 36,000.”
Hassett was chief economic adviser for John McCain’s doomed 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns. He was an economic adviser for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid. Perhaps most tellingly, Hassett was an economic adviser for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. Bush, of course, went on to preside over the last massive economic collapse before the current one. One senses the pattern here.
Hassett assumed his current White House role on March 20, 2020. Despite having no experience whatsoever with infectious disease modeling, he began peddling a series of shabby models that grossly downplayed the severity of the crisis. According to Hassett, there would be no more COVID deaths by mid-May.
Hassett was roundly denounced by scientists, medical professionals and various commentators for these astonishing inaccuracies, but Trump embraced his nonsense “data” with the same enthusiasm as he embraced hydroxychloroquine and the injection of disinfectants as COVID cure-alls. Within the airtight bubble of the Trump White House, Hassett played the tune the boss wanted to hear, even as the bodies piled higher and higher.
On Sunday, as the nation observed Memorial Day weekend, Hassett went on CNN to again peddle his “No Big Deal” snake oil, and did so in a way that will not be soon forgotten. “Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed,” he said of the damage done by COVID. “Our human capital stock is ready to get back to work. There are lots of reasons to believe that we can get going way faster than we have in previous crises.”
“Our human capital stock is ready to get back to work.”
Stock (noun): farm animals such as cattle, pigs and sheep, bred and kept for their meat or milk; livestock.
Let that sink in good and deep, down through the skin and into the marrow within your bones. Hassett’s remarkable statement on Sunday puts into stark relief the reason why this disaster has unfolded as it has.
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