printJust a few months back, during the Bush era, high-ranking commentators like Larry Kudlow and proxies were touting the strength of the US stock market. Stocks were undervalued. The economy was “strongly reaccelerating.” “Goldilocks, Goldilocks,” Kudlow would crow from the CNBC rooftop. (What on earth does than mean?)
Kudlow and Company could not say enough about the economic benefits of a depreciating dollar. A weak dollar was an asymptomatic blessing, helping to make “US assets very cheap,” and thus ameliorating the trade imbalance. Never mind that it has made Americans poorer.
That was the man and his entourage’s cri de coeur.
“Today’s economic weakness is coming from the business side, not the sub-prime/housing/consumer side,” Kudlow wrote in January 2008.
Back then, Kudlow called for cheaper money and more credit: “the Fed needs to deliver a 50 basis point rate cut at its January 30 meeting. A big-bang rate cut would help businesses, consumers, and mortgage owners. It would make the cost of money cheaper and expand the overall liquidity base of the economy. … Inflation is the most overrated issue out there,” Kudlow asserted.
Kudlow failed to see that government had set the scene for the “minority Meltdown.”
Another snake-oil merchant is Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal. He wrote a book praising Bush’s quicksand society. It was titled “Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.” Fox New’s Greta Van Susteren has seen fit to make the man who praised the state’s house-for-every-Hispanic schemes an authority on our economic woes.
Like Kudlow, Moore’s congenital inability to call the situation has not dented his career.
Now Kudlow has switched, conveniently, cribbing Peter Schiff’s analysis and pretending he was capable of the same prophetic predictions.
Why does he retain his job?
If you don’t believe me, check out the manner in which Schiff was maligned in 2007 by Kudlow’s crowd as another “Michael Moore,” for forewarning about the consequences of the US’s consumption and credit-based economy.
Kudlow is a hack. He lives in a bubble, one in which stocks are always going up. Buy buy buy! Take his advice and you might as well say Bye to your portfolio, or at least what’s left of it after the Fed gets done debasing the currency.
Like Ron Paul in the political arena, Peter Schiff in the financial world was mocked and laughed at for predicting an asset bubble was about to pop. Who is laughing now?
There is a famous Mohandas Gandhi quote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” This has happened to me several times in my career as a research physicist that I can amend it to: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they claim they invented the idea (and steal it from you) and were right all along – e.g. your ideas “win” but the idiots steal the credit and the research money. Perhaps someday, all the so-called Republikeynsian conservatives who ridiculed Peter Schiff, Ilana Mercer, and Ron Paul (THAT AMERICA-HATING NUT!!) will claim that they were for the Constitution all along!
They’re all Keynesian cheerleaders.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they claim they invented the idea (and steal it from you) and were right all along – e.g. your ideas “win” but the idiots steal the credit and the research money.”
Deserves repeating early and often. Thanks for another jewel, Myron.
Today’s news carries the warning that China’s central bank would like to dump the dollar.
Let’s see whether Kudlow picks up on the importance of that. I’m guessing he won’t, not until Schiff rubs his nose in it.
Or if he does, he’ll opine that to dump the dollar would be an act of war.