With the budget deficit topping $1 trillion again, Larry Kudlow promises a middle class tax cut proposal for later in the year

The American people are for two incompatible things, spending and tax cuts, and Trump is giving it to them, good and hard.

Story.

Trump's personnel decisions in a nutshell

The fools at CNBC write the dumbest headlines about jobs

"Strong job growth is back: Payrolls jump in June well above expectations"

The Civilian Employment Level is cyclical. It routinely bottoms in January and peaks in the summer with the cycle of seasonal part-time and full-time, the latter peaking in the summer months when millions of new graduates from high school and college get their first jobs.

So it is completely natural to have higher expectations for good jobs numbers in the summer, especially after four months of poorer performance than 224,000 Total Nonfarm Payrolls.

But if we were really having a jobs boom, "strong job growth", it would look like this, not like Trump's record so far with just two months out of thirty above 300,000:

LOL Larry Kudlow: 22,000 new payrolls in February 2019 "fluky", but 54,000 in May 2011 "meager", economy "sputtering", possibly a sign of recession

Obama Owns This Unemployment Report:

In recent weeks, a whole bunch of new economic stats have been pointing to a sputtering economy -- maybe even an inflation-prone, less-than-2-percent-growth recession. Stocks have dropped five straight weeks, as they look toward slower growth, jobs, and profits out to year end. And Friday's jobs report didn't buck these trends.

"Anemic" is the adjective being tossed around the media. According to the Labor Department, nonfarm payrolls increased a meager 54,000 in May, while private payrolls gained only 83,000. A week or two ago, Wall Street expected 200,000-plus new jobs. Didn't happen.

I remember when Trump promised a 10% spending cut in Jan 2017, now Kudlow announces a 5% cut after Republicans spend us blind: 100% politics, 0% serious

Trump to whack DC with 10% cut to discretionary spending, 20% cut to personnel

What a crock that turned out to be.

Federal employment is exactly in Feb 2019 where it was in Nov 2016: 2.799 million. 

And outlays? Look at the outlays!

Outlays in fiscal 2017 were up 3.3% from 2016, up another 4.8% in 2018, and up again in fiscal 2019 a whopping 5.6%.

Overall for fiscal 2019 spending is up 14.4% from 2016.

Just in time for the next election cycle, however, Larry Kudlow is out promising a spending cut of 5%.

Total BS.

Famous last words, Larry Kudlow edition

'Recession is so far in the distance I can't see it!' Trump's top economic adviser says fears of collapse are 'nonsense' as stocks erase ALL of 2018's gains in a few hours and five top tech stocks lose $1 trillion in value

The cult of Xi erupts over remarks by little Larry Kudlow

Kudlow:

“I don’t think President Xi at the moment has any intention of following through on the discussion we made and I think the president is so dissatisfied with China on these so-called talks that he is keeping the pressure on — and I support that.”

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying:

“That the relevant United States official unexpectedly distorted the facts and made bogus accusations is shocking and beyond imagination. The United States' flip-flopping and promise-breaking is recognized globally."

More here.

Trump to name the brain dead Kudlow to replace Gary Cohn at National Economic Council

The brain dead Kudlow, who served during the Reagan Administration but can't remember a better month for jobs than the 313,000 reported for February 2018, is reported to be Trump's choice to head the National Economic Council.

The story is here.

Larry Kudlow is brain dead and he's on the radio

Like Rush Limbaugh, Larry Kudlow doesn't accurately remember the Reagan era.

It's embarrassing coming from these self-appointed spokesmen for Ronald Reagan.

Unlike Limbaugh, however, Kudlow actually served in the Reagan Administration so he really ought to know better, but today on the radio he kept saying that the jobs created in February 2018 (313,000) don't get any better than that.

Flashback to February 1984: jobs added 481,000. Or February 1988: jobs added 453,000.

Need more?

June 1983: +379,000. July 1983: +418,000. September 1983: +1.115 MILLION.

1.115 MILLION!

IN ONE MONTH!

Do I need to go on?

Yes, I think I do.

November 1983: +353,000.

December 1983: +356,000.

January 1984: +446,000.

April 1984: +363,000.

June 1984: +379,000.

July 1984: +313,000.

November 1984: +349,000.

March 1985: +346,000.

July 1986: +318,000.

September 1986: +347,000.

April 1987: +338,000.

July 1987: +347,000.

October 1987: +492,000.

June 1988: +363,000.

September 1988: +339,000.

November 1988: +339,000.

The current jobs boom isn't a boom, not yet, not by a longshot, and is NOTHING like the Reagan era, and Kudlow is doing a disservice to the historical record in which he played a part.

You've become a political hack, Larry.

YOUR average hourly earnings are NOT up 2.9% as widely reported, for example by Larry Kudlow this weekend

Yes, average hourly earnings of TOTAL PRIVATE, seasonally adjusted, is up 2.9% year over year in January 2018.

Well, whoop dee do. Not seasonally adjusted it's up only 2.2%.

What to believe?

Average hourly earnings of TOTAL PRIVATE reports as much of the total universe of earnings as possible, but that's not the universe of 80% of American workers. It includes everybody, including the higher rollers in the top 20% whose big increases can skew the reported number dramatically. 

80% of American workers inhabit the world of production and nonsupervisory workers, whose average hourly earnings have always been tracked by the government going back to 1964.

Seasonally adjusted those earnings are up 2.4% year over year in January, but not seasonally adjusted BARELY 2%, a below average figure for the measure which is in keeping with what's been going on since 2008.

The little guy in this country has been getting crumbs from the masters' tables since 2008 when the routine increases averaging 3.4% before that went away. The new era averages a gain of 2.2% year over year, a cut of 35%.

The biggest gain in recent memory was 2.8% for January 2017, meaning most workers got their best increases since 2008 in 2016, not in 2017, and the 2% gain for 2017 means . . . THIS IS NOT A BOOM.

When the average worker starts getting ROUTINE year over year increases above 3% you'll know things are better.

They aren't.

The price of the latest continuing resolution will probably be a big tax increase

The last time we had a really big continuing resolution, defying "regular order", the Republicans gave away the store in exchange for lifting the export ban on oil.

Exports began in early 2016. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude has actually risen 51.6% since then, from an average of 31.68 in January 2016 to 48.04 in August 2017.

Larry Kudlow thinks Trump is a genius for clearing the deck with the debt ceiling, hurricane emergency funding, continuing resolution deal with the Democrats because now Congress can finally get down to tax reform and pass it before the end of the year.

Watch your wallets, I say. 

Trump White House appears to be backing away from Larry Kudlow/Steve Moore supply side tax plan from the campaign

Another bad sign for economic growth prospects.

From the story here:

"It's a little frustrating that they feel they have to write a new tax plan when they have a tax plan," said Steven Moore, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped formulate tax policy for the Trump campaign.

Brian Domitrovic and Larry Kudlow aren't the first to tell you the income tax made big government possible

Their book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution, released in September 2016, makes the point well, as does this article in Forbes:

And sure enough, with the income tax presenting itself as patriotically taxing the rich—at times with utterly fictional 91 and 94% top rates, from the 1940s until the 1960s, as Larry Kudlow and I marvel at in our recent book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution—government was able to grow where government under the tariff could not. The income tax supervised the rise of the federal government to well over a fifth of national output—from 3% during the era of the tariff. ... The dishonesty at the heart of the income tax was the key that unlocked the financing of big government, by the little guy no less.

We've been making the same point, more or less, since at least 2011, and especially in March 2016 here:

[Mark Levin's] tariff rant this evening ignores that the America of his precious founders was a tariff regime until the dreaded income tax of 1913.

The America of the founders was also a limited government for that reason until that very day.

But open wide the avenue for revenue, and you open the maw of the Leviathan and crawl into it.

Nathan Lewis thinks pretty highly of Judy Shelton's book on the gold standard

Here:

Today, the Federal Reserve, with the blessing of Congress, large banks, and many others, has embarked on an open-ended policy of printing money on a daily basis, basically to fund the Federal government's budget deficit although no one may speak such things in name. These situations tend to end badly, and are soon followed -- as was the case with the United States in 1789, immediately after the Continental Dollar hyperinflation of the 1780s -- by a rigorous gold standard system, more along the lines of the other four proposals that Shelton identifies.

The biggest gold standard advocates are those who lived through a hyperinflation. It is easy to forget that the hard money advocates of 1789 -- Hamilton, Jefferson, et. al -- were actually the same people that were printing money to finance Federal budget deficits in the 1780s, in the guise of the Continental Congress. Oops. More recently, people like Ludwig von Mises, who lived through the Austrian hyperinflation of the 1920s, became the biggest gold standard advocates of the 20th century.

Larry Kudlow likes her a lot, too, and had her on his show yesterday. You can listen to the podcast about an hour and twenty in at wabcradio.com: Go to the Saturday schedule and scroll down for the podcast.

Hillary can't claim she'll continue the good economy because it isn't a good economy

From the macroeconomic point of view of GDP, jobs and homeownership, the economy under Obama has been a bad joke.

Economic growth is lagging, lagging I say, the horrible, awful George W. Bush . . . by $2 trillion. Current dollar GDP under Obama has grown a paltry 28.2%. Under Bush, the worst in the post-war until now, it at least grew by 41.7%. Obama should kill to have George Bush's economic growth, and Hillary probably will, by starting another war. Nothing boosts GDP like war-spending.

Meanwhile job growth as measured by monthly total nonfarm has slowed in 2016 by over 20% compared with 2015, to 181,000 new jobs monthly vs. 229,000 new jobs monthly last year. Is that a hopeful trend?

And if you think 2015 was so great, it wasn't. If the same percentage of the population had been working in 2015 as worked in 2007, there would have been 7 million more employed than there were. There has been a huge contraction in employment, which explains the GDP problem. Without work there is no product.

You can see this vividly in full-time jobs. Compared to October 2007, we have just 2.6 million more full-time jobs in October 2016 than we had in 2007. Think about that. Just 2.6 million more full-time jobs but population has increased by 22 million. After recessions, full-time has always recovered to the previous highs in 2-3 years, but not under Obama. This time it took 8 years, a terrible stain on the economic record.

Next consider housing. There have been 6.4 million completed foreclosures since September 2008 even as the Feds have done everything they can to get housing prices to recover, distorting the economy to the point that today the typical $247,000 existing home is unaffordable for 90% of individual wage earners. No wonder the homeownership rate, at 63.5%, has plunged to a level last seen in 1985.

In the end about all Hillary surrogates have to boast of is the stock market. Larry Kudlow featured one on his radio program this weekend doing just that. But estimates of how many Americans own stocks vary considerably. Gallup recently put it at 52%. Pew in 2013 put it at 45%. Shockingly, the Federal Reserve itself estimates it's more like 13-15%. In the best case only half the country is reaping benefits from stocks, and probably a lot less than half.

Those people who had the foresight to invest in March 2009 have done extremely well. On average the S&P 500 is up over 17% per year since then through September 2016.

But how have long term investors done, people who buy and hold in retirement accounts? Since the last stock market boom peaked in August 2000, they are up only 4.32% per year. That's almost 64% worse than the historical post-war performance of 11.9% with little upside on the horizon as the market has made new all-time highs and is obscenely valued.

Nothing Hillary Clinton is proposing looks remotely likely to improve any of these measures, except maybe by starting a new war.

My boy will be 18 next year. Please don't vote for her.

Larry Kudlow made the right call NOT to run for the US Senate

Noted here:

A day earlier, Kudlow had announced that he would not run for the Senate from Connecticut. He had been toying with the notion for some time, and while there are many reasons not to go to Washington — he says he loves what he is doing now — he realized as he was touring the state that he had missed some AA meetings. “It’s not a good thing for me,” he told the New York Post.

Steady as she goes, Larry.

Larry Kudlow will NOT run in Connecticut for US Senate

Reported here four days ago.

Larry Kudlow to decide by the end of February whether to run against Senator Blumenthal in Connecticut

The Connecticut Mirror reports here:

For now, Kudlow is coy about his plans, saying he’ll “put out [his announcement] by the end of February.”

“It’s a complicated process,” he said. “There are a lot of issues involved." He and his wife Judith, he said, "are consulting a lot of people.”

Larry Kudlow today on his radio show repeatedly criticized Ted Cruz' attack on New York values

The Larry Kudlow Show is available by podcast at wabcradio.com.

Unlike fellow Jew Mark Levin, Kudlow found Cruz' debate remarks thoroughly reprehensible and repeatedly called on Cruz to apologize to New Yorkers.

Cruz already is doubling down, however, saying Americans don't want the rest of the country to become like liberal Manhattan.

Cruz is making a big mistake about New York. It shows he has a tin ear for politics. Americans everywhere admire New Yorkers' pluck in the face of adversity, their heroism and determination. It is politically senseless to ask such people to choose now between Ted Cruz and New York when they already have spoken their affection for the city that never sleeps.

Americans will never love Ted Cruz as much as they already love New York.

Larry Kudlow eyes Donald Trump's coattails

From the story here:

'Economist and political pundit Larry Kudlow says he is strongly considering challenging Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) for his Senate seat in 2016. ... Kudlow says he disagrees with Blumenthal on a variety of issues, ranging from the Iran nuclear agreement to the corporate tax rate. “Mr. Blumenthal was wrong on signing the Iran deal. He was wrong on pushing for the U.N. to bring Syrian hostages into the United States,” he said. “And . . . he’s a tax-and-spender. He was in Connecticut, and he’s a tax-and-spender in Washington at a time, frankly, with the economy at two percent [growth] or less, we ought to have a 15 percent corporate tax, not a 40 percent.”'

Kudlow has previously allied himself with Trump without saying so in so many words by coming out against the Iran deal and against letting in the refugee surge, but explicitly has come out in support of Trump's plan to slash the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent. Trump has repeatedly emphasized all three issues mentioned by Kudlow this weekend.

Kudlow clearly sees these as coattail issues on which he could succeed in a Connecticut US Senate run, emphasizing US and Israeli security after a period of increased terrorism as well as a pro-growth supply-side tax policy reminiscent of the era of Ronald Reagan as an answer to the moribund economy's ills.

It works both ways, Larry. Trump as president will need support within the Congress if he hopes to get passed anything he stands for as a candidate.