Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he hates the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, i.e. the guy he personally chose to run the thing after firing Janet Yellen for being too short. Since July, he’s routinely trashed the central bank for raising interest rates, ostensibly putting the brakes on the financial sugar high he’s hoping to ride through 2020. “The Fed has gone crazy,” he told reporters in October, blaming Powell for a market sell-off that analysts said was actually caused by ongoing trade tensions with China. “I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” he complained to The Washington Post in November. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.” Christmas Eve was spent screaming to Twitter that “The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the market. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch—he can’t putt!”

Normally, at this point, Trump would simply make his chief of staff fire Powell and install a lackey to do his bidding. But because he can’t really do that, he’s come up with an alternative plan: stack the Fed board with as many loyalists as possible, and hope that they break the will of the other governors, each of whom gets a vote on major decisions like interest rates and bank regulations, through sheer stupidity.

Earlier this month, we learned that one of the vacancies will likely go to “trickle-down” architect Stephen Moore, who was universally panned by economists across the ideological spectrum as nowhere near smart enough for the job. (“I think Ivanka would be a better pick,” said University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers.) Then, on Thursday, the president announced that he was officially nominating pizza C.E.O. and failed G.O.P. presidential nominee Herman Cain for the other slot. “I’ve recommended Herman Cain,” Trump revealed at the White House. “He’s a very terrific man, a terrific person. He’s a friend of mine. I have recommended him highly for the Fed. I’ve told my folks that’s the man.”

The overwhelming response has been one of disbelief. “President Trump has no respect for expertise. He is more interested in filling the Fed jobs with political allies than people well suited for the positions,” said Harvard economist Greg Mankiw. “I thought it was a joke at first,” said Senator Sherrod Brown. So what has Cain done during his illustrious career that has so convinced Trump he’s “the man”? A brief review of the highlights:

9-9-9: While running for president, Cain famously introduced a tax proposal called the 9-9-9 plan, which would have eliminated the tax system entirely and replaced it with a 9 percent personal income tax, a 9 percent corporate income tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. Economists called it “The most massively regressive redistribution of taxes ever seriously considered” and warned that it would be “a huge tax increase on most Americans, but a huge tax cut on the wealthy.” Cain produced a six-minute video called 9-9-9 the Movie: Slaying the Tax Monster, but apparently didn’t want to actually answer questions about it in real life:

-Gold: As of his presidential run, Cain favored a return to the gold standard, and wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal: “A gold standard is to the moochers and looters in government what sunlight and garlic are to vampires.”