"VP Joe Biden Is A Stock Looking For A Bottom"

As just stated by Larry Kudlow on WABC Radio.

The Purchasing Power of the Dollar Under Post-War Presidents Is A Catastrophe

The purchasing power of the dollar under Truman fell 12 percent in four years (1949-1953).

The purchasing power of the dollar under Eisenhower fell 12 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Kennedy/Johnson fell 23 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Nixon/Ford fell 65 percent in eight years (gold convertibility went out the window in 1971).

The purchasing power of the dollar under Jimmy Carter fell 50 percent in four years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Ronald Reagan fell 36 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under GHW Bush fell 17 percent in four years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Bill Clinton fell 23 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under GW Bush fell 21 percent in eight years.

Overall, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen 800 percent in the sixty years between 1949 and 2009. It takes $9 in 2009 to buy what $1 could in 1949.

People like Larry Kudlow who talk about "strong dollar" presidents "like Ronald Reagan" don't know what they are talking about.

We haven't had a single strong dollar president in the post-war period. All eleven have presided over inflationary (monetary) policies which have impoverished the American people.

For the 35 years between 1878 and 1913 the dollar ACTUALLY GAINED A PENNY in its purchasing power, when the dollar was fixed at $20.67 per ounce of gold.

The strong dollar presidents? Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and Taft.

A different breed of men.

Larry Kudlow Has Been Sensitive About "Socialism" Since His Support Of TARP

He got ripped big time for it by the left:

No wonder he's been slow to slam Obama as one.

Kudlow Changes His Tune: Calls Obama A Socialist

Last July Larry Kudlow was positively insisting that Barack Obama is just a liberal, not a socialist.

Today on his radio program in the opening hour he's changed his tune, calling Obama's policies socialist in most respects.

Progress.

Tim Carney Draws Blood and Larry Kudlow Proves it By Losing His Cool

Kudlow didn't like being exposed for a hypocrite, and beat up on the young guy (video here) just to show who's in charge, but the point still stands:

Republicans shill for high finance and free trade at the expense of Main Street and American manufacturing workers. Protestations that government must not pick winners and losers to the contrary, it's high time in this country that American business and American government started picking America to win instead of some libertarian notion of the bottom line, which is poison to our communities.

Tim Carney speaks up against it here, noting how Rick Santorum's populism has rankled Kudlow.

Ohio Repudiates ObamaCare Nov. 8th, Nov. 15th Obama Punishes Ohio by Stopping Gas Leases

'change we much'

As pointed out by an astute caller to Larry Kudlow's radio program today on WABC.

The Nov. 15 announcement by the USDA here means tens of thousands of jobs lost to Ohio and the loss of cheap natural gas for the country, according to this analysis by The Heritage Foundation.

On Nov. 8 Ohioans resoundingly rejected ObamaCare's mandate that Americans buy health insurance by a 2 to 1 margin, stating “In Ohio, no law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in a health care system.”

Larry Kudlow Likes Herman Cain's 999 Plan

Here:

Former Treasury hands Gary and Aldona Robbins priced out the Cain plan on a static basis and discovered it to be revenue neutral. Essentially they found a $26 trillion tax base yielding $2.3 trillion in revenue for a 9.1 percent overall rate. Hence, 9-9-9.

In essence, the Cain plan combines the flat tax (with its single marginal rate) and the fair tax (which uses the national sales tax). I don’t know if this is really possible. But in terms of first principles, throwing out the tax code, lowering marginal tax rates, getting rid of the carve-outs and deductions that make the current code impossible to understand, and providing an economic-growth tonic to heal our current funk, it makes a lot of sense.

That Herman Cain is rising in the polls is no surprise.

Gov. Rick Perry Would Fight Dollar Collapse, Maybe With A Little Tar and a Few Feathers

"Bernanke also is facing external dissent of a different type. This week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who's running for the GOP presidential nomination, made a controversial comment that appeared to encourage bodily harm to Bernanke if he continued to 'print money.'" -- Tom Petruno, LA Times, here.

"Gov. Rick Perry scorched the political pot on Tuesday with a red-hot rhetorical attack on Fed-head Ben Bernanke. When asked about the Fed reopening the monetary spigots, Perry said, 'If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we -- we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.'

"And that wasn’t all. In a more controversial slam, Perry said, 'Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous -- or treasonous -- in my opinion.'" -- Larry Kudlow, here.

"There is no known case of a person dying from being tarred and feathered in [the Revolutionary] period. During the Whiskey Rebellion, local farmers inflicted the punishment on Federal tax agents." -- Wikipedia entry, here.

This dramatization shows the victim stripped naked from head to toe, whereas to the waist only was more customary. -- (source)

Recent Explosion in M2 in US a Sign of European Bank Run?

Larry Kudlow explores the issue here:

According to the St. Louis Fed, M2 is up 24.2 percent at an annual rate over the past two months. Almost out of the blue, that comes to a near $500 billion increase. In rough terms, the M2 explosion breaks down to $165 billion in demand deposits and $335 billion in savings deposits.

What's going on here? There's a flight to government-guaranteed accounts. Some people believe Europeans are withdrawing from their own banking system and parking their money in the U.S. banking system, guaranteed by Uncle Sam.

The smart money has already left Europe. Last one out please switch off the lights. 

What?! James Pethokoukis Must Be High.

I just heard James Pethokoukis on Kudlow's radio program say Gov. Rick Perry is very conservative, to the right even of . . . Rep. Paul Ryan.

Wow! Whoopee! Imagine that, someone to the right of a moderate Republican.

What Baseline Budgeting Does to Spending in Ten Years

If you listen to Larry Kudlow, you know that he believes that baseline budgeting contributes only as much as 4 percent to the annual increase in spending built-in to the process.

Many others assert the number is more like 7 percent.

Let's see what 7 percent does to a budget over ten years.

Obama submitted a budget for fiscal year 2012, which was defeated in the Democrat-controlled Senate 97-0 in the spring. It called for $3.729 trillion in spending for the fiscal year 2012, set to begin in October 2011.

Let's assume his spending proposal had passed both houses of Congress without objection, and then add 7 percent to the total spending to get the next year's budget, also passed without objection, and so on for ten years.

Here are the ten annual increases, in billions of dollars: 261, 279, 299, 320, 342, 366, 392, 419, 448, and 480. The built-in new spending after ten years totals $3.606 trillion. (Coincidentally, to keep the AAA bond rating from Standard and Poor's, its Sovereign Ratings Committee was looking for $4 trillion in spending cuts today as a first step. It didn't get them.)

That gives you a total budget in 2022, ten years later, of $7.335 trillion, just $123 billion shy of a doubled budget in 10 years, and just what you should expect under the rule of 72.

This kind of doubling is fairly typical for actual spending for any ten year period you pick in the last forty or fifty years, and explains how we got into the pickle in which we presently find ourselves.

So spending increases are built-in at about 7 percent, and Kudlow is underestimating.

Growth to pay for these increases, however, is not built-in, and can never be. It's highly unpredictable and for that reason alone baseline budgeting should be abandoned.

But there's another reason. There hasn't been a single decade since the 1930s where average real growth has come even close to 7 percent, as Louis Woodhill has shown here. Our best decade was way back in the 1940s, when real growth measured 5.57 percent. We haven't done as well since.

There's only one word for what passes for America's spending policy: insanity.

We haven't ever been able to afford what we've been doing.

Larry Kudlow is No Conservative: Another Voice Impeding the Tea Party

So-called conservatives like Lawrence Kudlow insist, INSIST!, that Barack Obama is a liberal, not a socialist.

Wake up, Kudlow: The deficit is triple what it was under a real liberal, George W. Bush, and you call that more liberalism!

Which is why Kudlow, even today, keeps defending plans like the one from the Gang of Six. That plan's baseline assumes the expiration of the Bush tax rates, which means a reset UP of the tax rates. A cut from that is a cut, except relative to the rates from which it represents a tax increase.

GET ON THE RIGHT, KUDLOW!

Cut taxes, you moron.

And slash, SLASH!, spending.

Build submarines and satellites to project American power, and drill here. We don't need boots on the ground in what, 170 countries?!

This is so easy my fifth grader could beat you.

Madison Protests by Unions and Democrats are a Disgrace

So says Larry Kudlow:

The government-union protesters in Madison are anti-democracy; they are trying to prevent a vote in the legislature. In fact, Democratic legislators themselves are fleeing the state so as not to vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget cuts.

That's not democracy.

The teachers' union is going on strike in Milwaukee and elsewhere. They ought to be fired. Think Ronald Reagan PATCO in 1981. Think Calvin Coolidge police strike in 1919.

The teachers' union on strike? Wisconsin parents should go on strike against the teachers' union.

Read the rest here, at Real Clear Markets.