Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:41 pm
CNBC contributor and Trump media booster Larry Kudlow is apparently headed to the White House to give Trump economic advice as bad as his national security advice, as The Detroit News‘ Chad Livengood revealed:
BREAKING: @Larry_Kudlow to chair White House Council of Economic Advisers, @StephenMoore tells @LansingChamber https://t.co/u3z3PcQRdS
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) December 15, 2016
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
This is the same Kudlow who told us just the other day, “Successful biz execs in cabinet is right way. Ignore class warfare. Tax reform, deregulation. Growth!”
Which means Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman’s warning back in 2015 that Republican presidential hopefuls were “courting the charlatan caucus” has been born out.
The charlatan circus you ask? Well…Justin Wolfers of the Brookings Institute reminds us, on the eve of the collapse of 2008, Kudlow was telling us all “There ain’t no recession…The recession debate is over. It’s not gonna happen. Time to move on.”
"The recession debate is over.. The Bush boom is alive and well"
— Larry Kudlow, December 2007https://t.co/k1CzckGOLi pic.twitter.com/Y3JPJeApRx— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) December 15, 2016
Then, of course, the recession comes, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929. Paul Krugman admits few economists saw the crash of 2008 coming but makes a solid point:
To be fair, Mr. Kudlow and Mr. Laffer eventually admitted that they had been wrong. Neither has, however, given any indication of reconsidering his views, let alone conceding the possibility that the much-hated Keynesians, who have gotten most things right even as the supply-siders were getting everything wrong, might be on to something. Mr. Kudlow describes the failure of runaway inflation to materialize — something he has been predicting since 2008 — as “miraculous.â€
[…]
So what does it say about the current state of the G.O.P. that discussion of economic policy is now monopolized by people who have been wrong about everything, have learned nothing from the experience, and can’t even get their numbers straight?
HuffPo‘s Justin Linkins took a more brutal approach:
“Still, the whole idea of Larry Kudlow chairing the White House Council of Economic Advisors is an intriguing prospect. And it could work, provided the scenario involves periodically releasing Kudlow from a box, getting his advice, stuffing him back inside, and then doing exactly the opposite of his suggestions.”
The Kudlow Stupid doesn’t stop there, however, as Paul Blumenthal takes us with him on a trip down memory lane:
“I’m so old I remember when Larry Kudlow said the War in Iraq was necessary because the stock market would go up.”
Of course, an untaxed war – two wars, really – was one of the contributing causes to the recession Kudlow said was not going to happen.
Krugman, like so many of us, concludes that it’s the abandonment of “the idea that there is an objective reality out there” that is the problem. Right-wing doctrine wins out every time. And, I’d suggest to Mr. Krugman, simple greed. The Corrupter-in-Chief’s doctrine, after all, is whatever puts a buck in his pocket.
It’s one thing to be wrong about something; it’s entirely another to refuse to learn something from your mistake. In this, Kudlow fits right into a Trump administration that lacks the ambition to learn a single thing about…well, anything.
Trump’s communications director Jason Miller tweeted “Larry Kudlow: Trump to End ‘White House War Against Business.'”
And lead a war on reality instead.
As we reported here last night, a new report reveals that President Obama has been “really, really good for the economy.” Remember that, because President Trump is going to be really, really bad for the economy.
Photo: Twitter
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
