Larry Kudlow wrote an absurd piece at CNBC today.
Of course Kudlow is usually wrong and frequently absurd … as an example, in June 2005 Kudlow wrote “The Housing Bears are Wrong Again” and called me (or people like me) “bubbleheads”.
Homebuilders led the stock parade this week with a fantastic 11 percent gain. This is a group that hedge funds and bubbleheads love to hate. All the bond bears have been dead wrong in predicting sky-high mortgage rates. So have all the bubbleheads who expect housing-price crashes in Las Vegas or Naples, Florida, to bring down the consumer, the rest of the economy, and the entire stock market.
In the piece today, Kudlow claimed: “I’ve always believed the 1990s were Ronald Reagan’s third term.”
Kudlow is rewriting his own history. Near the beginning of Clinton’s first term, Kudlow was arguing Clinton’s policies would take the economy into a deep recession or even depression. Kudlow was wrong then (I remember because I was on the other side of that debate), so he can’t claim he “always believed” now. Nonsense.
Further down, Kudlow dismisses gains in the stock market as unrelated to the economy:
“Over the last eight quarters … the S&P 500 climbed 43 percent. But that’s mostly from record profits and expanding multiples.”
Weird, because in 2007, Kudlow wrote:
“I have long believed that stock markets are the best barometer of the health, wealth and security of a nation. And today’s stock market message is an unmistakable vote of confidence for the president.”