Trump tells people he is selecting Larry Kudlow to replace Gary Cohn

Bucky · Mar 14, 2018

Saladin4 said:
I saw Kudlow on TV ranting about some non sense...He was loud and obnoxious...I wanted to kick him the face.....Just sayin'

I am suprised at the negative reaction Kudlow is receiving.

I remember watching the kudlow report while eating figgy pudding. It was extremely relaxing. Kudlow has a calming voice. He really is a great story teller

PeteEU · Mar 14, 2018

Unitedwestand13 said:
is larry kudlow some guy on cnbc?

Yep and he is an absolute idiot. He and Carmer on CNBC were pushing Lehmann stock up to the day they went bust. He is consistently wrong and a conservative ideolog hack.

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MTAtech · Mar 14, 2018

Bucky said:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics/larry-kudlow-gary-cohn-white-house/index.html

What a tremendous pickup for the Trump administration. Larry Kudlow is an intellectual mind and will become an asset to The Donald. The right guy at the right time. What a home run selection!

Kudlow has been wrong about every economic matter. He got the financial crisis wrong. He embraced austerity as the solution for the recession. As Jonathan Chait said, "The interesting thing about Kudlow’s continuing influence over conservative thought is that he has elevated flamboyant wrongness to a kind of performance art."

Moreover, Kudlow is really just a TV personality that doesn't know how to manage anything. It would be like Trump appointing William Shatner to command the Navy's 7th Fleet.

MTAtech · Mar 14, 2018

Fenton said:
Here's the NYTs Paul Krugman predicting global economic collapse the day after Trumps win

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...-night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout

As for Kudlow, if he's a proponent of pro-growth, supply side initiatives, then he's a good pick

Except that Paul Krugman admits he was wrong, when he is wrong.

Yes, Krugman said the above on November 9, 2016 and retracted it on November 11, 2016.

There’s a temptation to predict immediate economic or foreign-policy collapse; I gave in to that temptation Tuesday night, but quickly realized that I was making the same mistake as the opponents of Brexit (which I got right). So I am retracting that call, right now. It’s at least possible that bigger budget deficits will, if anything, strengthen the economy briefly. More detail in Monday’s column, I suspect.

Bucky · Mar 14, 2018

FYI Larry Kudlow has told people this will be a 1-year assignment.

I like this a lot.

JasperL · Mar 14, 2018

Bucky said:
I am suprised at the negative reaction Kudlow is receiving.

I remember watching the kudlow report while eating figgy pudding. It was extremely relaxing. Kudlow has a calming voice. He really is a great story teller

I don't think it matters a whole lot, but the problem with Kudlow is he's just a mouthpiece for GOP 'economic' policy. He's like Hannity, but on economics. If Trump wants an effective spokesman, he'll do fine. If he wants an actual economist to give him unbiased advice, he's not the guy. Any one with a background in economics/accounting/finance and just a little work - a couple of days or so - could do Kudlow's job just fine on the substance. What he's good at is the PR, talking on TV, charisma.

Bucky · Mar 14, 2018

JasperL said:
I don't think it matters a whole lot, but the problem with Kudlow is he's just a mouthpiece for GOP 'economic' policy. He's like Hannity, but on economics. If Trump wants an effective spokesman, he'll do fine. If he wants an actual economist to give him unbiased advice, he's not the guy. Any one with a background in economics/accounting/finance and just a little work - a couple of days or so - could do Kudlow's job just fine on the substance. What he's good at is the PR, talking on TV, charisma.

And we know for a fact a big portion of the economy is based on consumer confidence/psychology.

MTAtech · Mar 14, 2018

Bucky said:
And we know for a fact a big portion of the economy is based on consumer confidence/psychology.

You got your chicken and egg backwards. People have confidence in the economy when the economy is actually good -- not that the economy becomes good because some guy on TV tells them it's good.

exoplanet · Mar 14, 2018

The moral of the story is: if we need to win Pennsylvania, then it doesn't matter what your economic policy is.

washunut · Mar 14, 2018

MTAtech said:
You got your chicken and egg backwards. People have confidence in the economy when the economy is actually good -- not that the economy becomes good because some guy on TV tells them it's good.

Then how do it explain this. According to many this is simply a continuation of the Obama economy. He should get the credit, not Trump.

Yet both consumer and business confidence is way up since the change in administrations.

Help is out with this conundrum.

JasperL · Mar 14, 2018

Bucky said:
And we know for a fact a big portion of the economy is based on consumer confidence/psychology.

I'm not a big believer in that, actually. Maybe over very short periods, but fundamentals drive consumer confidence, rather than the reverse.

Politics is driven by that kind of thing, so Kudlow might be the right pick. I don't think a lot of actual POLICY in D.C. is driven by sober economic analysis, so I'm not concerned about Kudlow's (lack of) qualifications. His job will be to sell the politics of what Republicans want to do based on donors, votes, etc. Fine.

He's nice to listen to, but I quit caring about his opinion a long time ago, and if you cared before the financial crisis, you should have quit then, because if you listened to him and other Wall Street shills and cheerleaders (his job IMO), you got killed.

FWIW, a lot of folks are mentioning his drug addiction. I don't think that's a fair criticism. AFAIK, he's been clean for a long time. We should as society reward that and not use it as a club to pummel him with years later. I have my biases there - overcame my own issues - but it's also the right thing to do.

MTAtech · Mar 15, 2018

washunut said:
Then how do it explain this. According to many this is simply a continuation of the Obama economy. He should get the credit, not Trump.

Yet both consumer and business confidence is way up since the change in administrations.

Help is out with this conundrum.

It is true that the current economic conditions are a straight line continuation from when Obama presided and consumer confidence is no exception to that fact. Below we can see how consumer confidence grew as the economy grew all through Obama's terms.

washunut · Mar 15, 2018

MTAtech said:
It is true that the current economic conditions are a straight line continuation from when Obama presided and consumer confidence is no exception to that fact. Below we can see how consumer confidence grew as the economy grew all through Obama's terms.

I agree that consumer confidence moved up from a very low base, once the recession ended with the help of the Obama administration. It continued to rise until about 2015 then seemed to plateau and slip a bit if I am reading the graph correctly. It did however spike about the election. Whether that was because Trump won or Clinton lost is a fair question.

I don't have the graph of business confidence, but those numbers currently are currently sky high. Those numbers directly impact the decisions CEOs make good or bad. Late 2008 companies concerned about their lines of credit layed-off many thousands of workers in panic. Which is another reason that the recession was so deep and over relatively quickly when the banks were stabilized and the stimulus plan put in place.

MTAtech · Mar 15, 2018

washunut said:
I agree that consumer confidence moved up from a very low base, once the recession ended with the help of the Obama administration. It continued to rise until about 2015 then seemed to plateau and slip a bit if I am reading the graph correctly. It did however spike about the election. Whether that was because Trump won or Clinton lost is a fair question.

I don't have the graph of business confidence, but those numbers currently are currently sky high. Those numbers directly impact the decisions CEOs make good or bad. Late 2008 companies concerned about their lines of credit layed-off many thousands of workers in panic. Which is another reason that the recession was so deep and over relatively quickly when the banks were stabilized and the stimulus plan put in place.

I wouldn't make a big deal over periodic ups and downs. The general trend is what's important. Ups and downs usually are the random walk that isn't easily explained.

JasperL · Mar 15, 2018

washunut said:
I agree that consumer confidence moved up from a very low base, once the recession ended with the help of the Obama administration. It continued to rise until about 2015 then seemed to plateau and slip a bit if I am reading the graph correctly. It did however spike about the election. Whether that was because Trump won or Clinton lost is a fair question.

I don't have the graph of business confidence, but those numbers currently are currently sky high. Those numbers directly impact the decisions CEOs make good or bad. Late 2008 companies concerned about their lines of credit layed-off many thousands of workers in panic. Which is another reason that the recession was so deep and over relatively quickly when the banks were stabilized and the stimulus plan put in place.

That's true, but businesses were promised a bunch of stuff with Trump in the WH and the GOP in control of Congress, and got it - the big tax cuts, and regulatory relief, not to mention regulators that wouldn't enforce what rules were left. And they got it. But those things affect fundamentals - cash flow and regulatory costs or risks.