Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke to the press at Davos, Switzerland this morning where he was asked about teen climate activist Greta Thunberg's call for the world to divest from fossil fuels.
Rather than seriously address the issue, Mnuchin said Thunberg needs to 'study economics' and get back to him.
"Is she the chief economist or who is she? I'm confused," Mnuchin said, before adding this was "a joke. That was funny."
"After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us," Mnuchin said.
Thunberg, alongside 20 other young climate activists, has called on global leaders attending the forum to stop the "madness" of ongoing investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction and "completely divest" from fossil fuels.
You know who really needs to study economics?
Steve fuckin' Mnuchin.
Mnuchin also participated in an interview with CNBC while at Davos this morning where he said the federal deficit is becoming unsustainable and, while he's not necessarily wrong about that, he said the Trump regime's $1.5 trillion tax cut is not responsible for the widening deficit.
He also said the White House is drafting more tax cuts.
As he acknowledged the administration of Republican President Donald Trump was considering additional tax cuts to stimulate the economy, Mnuchin blamed government spending - and Democrats in Congress - for the federal deficit.
In an interview with CNBC, Mnuchin said increased military and non-military spending was the cause of the deficits, not the tax cuts pushed through Congress by Trump in late 2017.
He said he remained convinced that those cuts would pay for themselves over a 10-year period. Yet economic growth rates have slowed this year as the benefits of the tax cuts fade and tariffs imposed on Chinese imports hurt American farmers and manufacturers.
So, tell me, who is the economic neophyte here?
Is it the teen climate activist or is it the 57-year-old movie producer who still believes tax cuts pay for themselves even though that has literally never happened and is not currently happening? As Treasury secretary, Mnuchin can look directly at the data himself and see that the tax cuts aren't paying for themselves. There's no excuse for him to say such nonsense.
Thunberg actually has some big guns on her side including BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink who recently announced that the $7 trillion asset manager, the world's largest, would divest from coal and require all of their clients to present their plans for sustainability and climate change.
The European Union is also organizing a $1 trillion investment fund to transform the bloc's economy and become carbon-neutral over the next 30 years.