Presenting the economic super-genius Larry Kudlow, who took to the National Review in December, 2007, to explain that there was no recession.
There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead ’”quarter after quarter, year after year’” defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth. In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom. [...]
There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. 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.
In December of 2007, the mortgage crisis was in full swing. The recession itself officially began that very month, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. By the time it was over it would be the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression; multiple of the nation's largest financial firms and other industry titans would require bailouts by the federal government, to say nothing of the effect on small businesses, storefronts, workers, retirees and nearly everyone else.
Not only did Larry Kudlow insist it was not happening, as it did, he wrote columns mocking those that considered the economy less than robust.
Earlier today, a doom and gloom economic forecast from Macro Economic Advisors was released predicting zero percent growth in the fourth quarter. This report is off by at least two percentage points. These guys are going to wind up with egg on their faces.
In short, and it is going to be vital to remember this in upcoming months, Larry Kudlow is an idiot. He is a television crackpot, an economic "analyst" whose analysis is regularly nonsensical, a scam artist who dismisses outright whatever evidence goes against his trickle-down twitches. He not only failed to see the Great Recession coming, he was contemptuous of the very notion even after it was already underway.
He's a charlatan of the usual "television financial adviser" type. He's to economics what Bill Kristol is to military strategy or what Tucker Carlson is to whatever the hell Tucker Carlson goes on about. He's not just a hack, he is literally nothing else. He may be the wrongest man on television, in an era in which being wrong on television is very nearly an Olympic sport.
So he's a good fit for Donald Trump, the man who can't grasp any discussion more nuanced than those on Fox & Friends. The rest of us, however, are screwed; there may be no "pundit" in America whose advice is more likely to lead to global recession than, of all people, Larry Kudlow.
