Miran’ monetary policy advocacy is simply puzzling

Through one of the strangest twists in economic history, Stephen Miran, chief economic advisor to US President Donald Trump and newly appointed member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, hasseen his career resurrected in almost mythical fashion ever since the failure ofthe investment firm he co-founded in 2022.

- RAHUL JACOB

That company, Amberwave Partners, launched an ETF that “never attracted more than $1.7 million in assets” (a trifling sum in the world of US money management), according to The Wall Street Journal. Amberwave morphed into a hedge fund but didn’t gain traction and shut in late 2023.

Scarcely a year later, Trump’s victory in the US election amounted to a rebirth for Miran. Apart from being among the most ardent ofall the president’s yes-men, he isa vocal proponent of drastically curbing immigration, weakening the dollarand asking US allies to bear a larger share of defence expenses on strategic alliances. Trump’swin paved the way for him to take up a much larger roleas chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers. Last week, the 42-year-old economist, newly appointed to the Fed by a slim Senate margin, with every Democratic senator having voted against his appointment, cast the lone dissenting vote in the Fed’smonetary policy decision. He wanted a 50-basis-point cut to the Fed's federal funds target, twice the size of what was delivered. On Monday, Miran doubled down, arguing that the US economy needsaggressive cutsso the policy rate reaches about 2.5%.