Larry Kudlow misses again

[tallguy]

Let me say first that I don't even care if this thread gets any responses.  Sometimes you just have to do things even if it is only for you.   


Larry Kudlow, who was once described by the Washington Post as, "(T)he man who has arguably been more publicly and consistently wrong about the economy than any person alive" is at it again.  The man who is responsible for these gems:

1993: Kudlow proclaims in a speech: “There is no question that President Clinton’s across-the-board tax increases on labor, capital and energy will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy’s long-run potential.”  The economy goes into an eight-year expansion and adds 21 million jobs.

2001: Kudlow writes in National Review about the George W. Bush tax cuts: “Faster economic growth and more profitable productivity returns will generate higher tax revenues at the new lower tax-rate levels. Future budget surpluses will rise, not fall.”  Tax revenue falls, and the budget goes from surplus into deep deficits.

2002: Kudlow, arguing for war in Iraq, writes in National Review: “The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points.”  The market falls and the Dow Jones doesn’t get that couple-thousand-point elevation for years.

2009: Kudlow says in an interview: “President Obama is waging war on investors. He’s waging war against businesses.” In a piece in the Washington Times he warns that inflation could “ratchet higher.”  The stock market and corporate profits climb to records, while inflation remains historically low.

Worst of all, was this:

It was the eve of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression.  Many on Wall Street worried that a recession loomed and that the housing bubble was bursting.  And then there was Larry Kudlow, the man President Trump just tapped to be his top economic adviser.

“Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S. economy continues moving ahead,” Kudlow wrote on Dec. 7, 2007, in National Review, predicting that gloomy forecasters would “wind up with egg on their faces.”  Kudlow, who previously derided as “bubbleheads” those who warned about a housing bubble, now wrote that “very positive” news in housing should “cushion” falling home sales and prices.

“There’s no recession coming.  The pessimistas were wrong.  It’s not going to happen,” wrote Kudlow. “ . . .  The Bush boom is alive and well.  It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come.  Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.”

Even as trouble became clear, Kudlow, a CNBC pundit who is not trained in economics, wrote a Feb. 5, 2008, column in National Review saying he was “still betting on and buying Goldilocks for the long run.”  He wrote, “Maybe we are going to have a mild correction.  Maybe not,” adding: “I’m going to bet that the economy will be rebounding sometime this summer, if not sooner.  We are in a slow patch.  That’s all.  It’s nothing to get up in arms about.”

When the economy didn’t rebound and housing continued its collapse, Kudlow pronounced, in a CNBC column on July 24, 2008, that he saw in the data “an awful lot of very good new news, which appear to be pointing to a bottom in the housing problem; in fact, maybe the tiniest beginnings of a recovery.”  Stocks lost nearly half their value in the coming months.

Kudlow is now stumping for Arthur Laffer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Laffer famously back in 1975 sketched a drawing on a restaurant bar napkin of what later came to be known as the Laffer Curve.  That meeting was attended by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Jude Wanniski, a conservative political economist and commentator.  Now, the idea itself was not new.  Laffer himself acknowledges that it dates back centuries.  It is not even particularly profound.  It rests on two assumptions, one of which is arguable at best, and says nothing of substance in itself.   It was, however, seized upon by conservatives and became the general basis not only for Reaganomics but GOP policy for decades.   The horribly simplistic interpretation and gross mischaracterization of the theory by the greedy and powerful who just wanted to grift themselves more money has done tremendous damage to this nation.   It set in motion what I as an actual fiscal conservative believe will ultimately destroy this country.  And this is who should receive a Nobel prize?     I don't think so.

No surprise though that Trump loves Kudrow.  He has a show that is rated both hyper-partisan and unreliable, and is always willing to shill for anybody on the far right, no matter what the truth actually is.  Fits right in.

[billisonboard]

Good morning,  tallguy  

[djAdvocate]

i loathe educated people who pervert their education for political purposes. Kudlow is among the worst.

[billisonboard]

Oct 14, 2024 13:53:32 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

i loathe educated people who pervert their education for political purposes. Kudlow is among the worst.

tallguy 's post commented on his education and I double checked it:

He graduated from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, with a bachelor's degree in history in 1969.[6] Although his undergraduate qualifications and credentials pertaining to economics have been called into question as he completed only an undergraduate degree with a major in history (aside from his foreign policy coursework at Princeton), Kudlow claims that the particular history curriculum that he completed at Rochester dealt heavily with economic themes, especially pertinent to trade policy.[3][7]

In 1971, Kudlow enrolled in the master's program at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, but he left before completing his degree.

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