A Talk with Larry Kudlow
"A Talk with Larry Kudlow" Air Marshal kudlow On Cutting Taxes, Growing the Market Whacking Iraq How many supply-siding, flag-wearing Reaganauts get an hour every night in prime time to tout their friends, hold...
...Now that creates a big incentive for individuals...
...Derivatives are huge—using Bank of England numbers, out of probably a $40 trillion world financial system today, derivatives are somewhere between $3 trillion and $6 trillion...
...TAS Ebbers is S400 million in the hole...
...The sheer volume, the dollar amount, wasn't that alarming...
...The dividends tax is one of these tricky little taxes that has screwed up everything...
...Ironically, it's two government agencies that have the biggest risk—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have had explosive growth in their balance sheets, much of which is then laid off or shorted or hedged...
...Just as a change in regimes in Iraq would benefit the U.S...
...So they want the most hospitable Congress 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002...
...What we found in the polling is that investors are more enthusiastic about dividend relief than they are about capital gains...
...In the meantime, we must think of it as our enemy and consider this reality in our global fight against terrorism...
...Saudi Arabia rejects important basic human freedoms...
...he's heard me articulate stuff and he realizes what's good...
...But you have to be critical...
...TAS So are we in danger of doing a Japan...
...He's a right-winger at Harvard—I think it's hilarious...
...What are the facts...
...TAS That was hardly the rule...
...I think basically they expect to invade Iraq some time between the day after the election and early January, if for no other reason, because the weather is right...
...And the business community in Washington and the trade groups—which I argue sometimes don't really represent business's best interests—didn't want to mess with it either...
...You worry about such things...
...First of all, going broke is not the worst thing in the world...
...One is housing—home prices are going up and all I can say is `God bless 'em' (See "Bubble Heads," page 20...
...TAS A critic would say that makes you a voodoo economist—focusing on gold as a guide...
...What people want to know from the politicians is: `What are you going to do to get my 401k back?' TAS Make the Dow and NASDAQ go up...
...the press is ruthlessly censored...
...And we think Andrew Card has changed...
...It's also no wonder that a much-publicized report to a Pentagon advisory board recently concluded that "the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers...
...But these obvious connections to terrorism are just the beginning...
...Given its totalitarian policies, its open support of terrorism, and the anti-American, anti-Israel vitriol spewing daily from its state-sponsored press and religious institutions, the U.S...
...They don't need bankers to help them, and their collateralized assets are a potent force in getting the public to loan them money...
...It was extraordinary...
...LK Unfortunately, that's what happened...
...TAS So that's the new nirvana—more disclosure...
...But then it turns out—and I knew it was coming and I said so on the air, because in this game worst case becomes the real case—I said, `Regrettably I believe we are going to find out that Mr...
...LK Through at least the first part of 1999, Greenspan held off the Keynesian wolves on the Fed's senior staff...
...They're very unpleasant, but the march of history moves on...
...TAS Why temporary...
...had the most...
...And I give Greenspan credit for that he adopted the great economist Josef Schumpeter's ideas about new technologies' deflationary effects...
...TAS What about our class warriors...
...LK We have two things going for us right now that tell us we can avoid a Japanese deflation...
...This is how the world is measured...
...LK Before the Tyco scandal broke, I had Dennis Kozlowski, the CEO, on the phone...
...TAS How does he think an economy grows...
...TAS So a huge global economy pegged to a floating curve—isn't that a little scary...
...TAS Sc the %/ e eiruse is already 'do ng past the mid-ter^, e'ect,ors' LK No, and here's what they think—correctly, I'd add...
...and Israel, or that secret documents found recently prove that the Saudi government gives money to terrorist organizations and bestows handsome cash rewards on the families of suicide bombers in Israel...
...While at one time the U.S...
...LK There's a very simple indicator—it's what I call the liquidity spread...
...It's not coming from him, but I told Lindsey off the air that he miscalculated—have you looked at what's happening to these poor middlemen in Chicago, Detroit, or Gary, Indiana...
...LK That's the $64,000 question...
...LK I would hope so...
...We think that for some reason Bush has changed his political views...
...Since the campaign, they've had nothing...
...LK The government is starting to get its arms around it...
...LK Larry Lindsey is a pure free trader...
...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines...
...The key point is to equalize the treatment of equity and debt...
...The Saudis actively support more than 30,000 Wahhabi religious schools and mosques in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Western Europe and the United States...
...You must try to understand that the Lord has a plan for all of us, but it is His plan, not ours...
...TAS The high dollar was Bob Rubin's crowning glory...
...TAS Apparently every time they take a poll here, 98 percent of Americans say they want a balanced budget...
...TAS Where did that come from...
...That's one of the reasons this is the greatest country in history...
...He taught at MIT...
...must reconsider its relationship with Saudi Arabia...
...I don't use the term lightly...
...LK I'm worried, more than I was six months ago...
...Finally, most analysts agree that the Saudis need the U.S...
...other people do it, and wrongdoers have to accept the consequences...
...Or look at the Rigas family at Adelphia, the friendly little cable company—they bought a hockey team...
...So I defended him on the air...
...S*** happens...
...TAS Card didn't have to change—he's a liberal Republican...
...It was the high tide of this boom, and Greenspan did not abort it...
...73 The Saudis Are they our friends . . . or our enemies...
...Productivity enhancements were whipping through the economy, getting 10-percent gains from International Harvester and goofy, old industrial companies...
...Look, from my own personal experience with failure and defeat, I think you must seek and find some faith in God...
...Rubin came in on those coattails, but it was Greenspan calling the shots...
...attack on the Taliban and have failed to crack down on their own al Qaeda supporters...
...He really worked with the Fed staff and they said, `Look, Alan, we can't have 5-percent growth...
...LK Let me make a couple of personal comments...
...I'm a free market guy who loves business—business is what makes this country great...
...Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world.Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...
...Meyer is a superb technical economist...
...No wonder the Saudi-supported press regularly praises terrorist actions against the U.S...
...Rove has LK Cheney is rock-solid...
...that's wonderful...
...But not for 5,000 Special Forces, and for all we know it's already happening...
...To listen to Rubin on domestic issues, you could just die...
...LK That's correct, and he was the protectionist...
...Ironically, one of the goofier Treasury secretaries, Nicholas Brady, understood this issue, but his president, Bush Sr., couldn't have cared less...
...He's a free spending left-winger...
...If we're going to put 250,000 troops in there, Bush needs a congressional resolution to get the whole country behind him...
...and the world, so would a change in the feudal regime in Saudi Arabia—the ousting of the royal ruling class...
...We had Jon Corzine on the show—the left of the left in the U.S...
...They were cutting their cost structures to the bone...
...He's done a great job at Harvard, though...
...At the corporate level, I don't really care—I'd like to tax interest and dividends at zero, a 100-percent exemption...
...That has tremendous implications for corporate governance, as well as for profits and economic growth...
...TAS So Lindsey's wobbly too...
...TAS Are they going into class-warfare, election mode...
...Box 590359 ^ San Francisco, CA 94159 Gerardo Joffe, President Visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org esting debate...
...He would not tighten, despite the fact that the economy was growing at 4 to 5 percent—almost 2 percentage points faster than what they call potential growth...
...TAS Can you reduce tsunamis with, say, a more stable currency...
...LK If you look at what they're saying, they're already there, which is too bad...
...we're straining the resources of the economy and the stock market is too high, blah, blab, blab, blab.' And they just kept tightening, selling Treasury bills and taking cash out of the economy...
...And they'd say that what you're actually calling for is a weak dollar, which is going to inflict all sorts of damage...
...Larry Kudlow Oh, I love it...
...Excerpts: The American Spectator What's a serious guy doing on TV five nights a week...
...Facts and Logic About the Middle East P.O...
...TAS Deflation is no joke—look at Japan...
...LK Large companies today go directly to the commercial paper market...
...Bob Rubin's a smart guy, a nice man, but he hates tax cuts...
...I have a problem with that...
...What I want to do is equalize the incentive structure...
...But now, because fifteen of nineteen of the September 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, because Saudi schools and newspapers teach anti-American and anti-Semitic hatred, and because Saudi Arabia refuses to cooperate with U.S...
...TAS What about all the bankruptcies...
...relied heavily on the free flow of Saudi oil—since as much as 25% of the world's supply may lie within its boundaries—things have changed...
...It's the only cash crop he has...
...Well these guys are violating both.' TAS But do we need a witch-hunt now, while we use a rearview mirror to go back through every accounting decision made during this incredible onrush of technological disruption...
...request that they seize Osama bin Laden...
...After 9/11, the Saudis opposed the U.S...
...We wanted George W. to look at it during the campaign, and he did...
...LK I survived...
...The deficiency here is content—they're not producing policies...
...TAS LK They were interested, but in terms of personal taxes, not business taxes...
...He's my man...
...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail...
...And a month later it turns out he was dodging state sales taxes for art, which is so silly, so stupid...
...I don't want to punish debt...
...We think the political people have overridden them...
...Treasury market—I can guarantee it...
...TAS Be s0er f;c LK What I'm pushing for is to make dividends at the personal level taxable at the capital gains rate...
...It's gone from 20 bucks a barrel to 30...
...In 1996, the Saudis refused a U.S...
...New energy technologies are reducing our dependence on oil in general...
...I pin that on Zoellick...
...He's a smart fellow and his life is in the stock market...
...In financial markets, the currency is information...
...TAS You could argue that it never ended...
...My partner on the show is basically a pro-stock market Democrat...
...LK Yes and no...
...But here's what you could do: improve America's entire capital structure by reforming the dividends tax...
...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 TAS And since then...
...TAS Flow does he get back...
...Well, even with this hit we've taken since 2000, we've gone in ballpark numbers from $5 trillion in wealth to $30 trillion, so that's a pretty good story...
...I asked if there were any improprieties and he said no, absolutely not...
...Ordinary people, Main Street people, are furious at CEOs who have done bad—they want reform, they want Jeff Skilling, and maybe they'll get him...
...they can get, because you're going to have tough decisions...
...TAS Will we ever see pro-growth Democrats...
...LK That's a real good question...
...LK Sure—the world is made of risks...
...Saudi Arabia is run by a totalitarian regime—the oil-rich House of Saud, a tyranny of princes and royal cousins...
...Wall Street wasn't as powerful then, because not as many people owned stocks...
...It literally fell through the legislative cracks...
...all this other crap...
...Without Cheney, I'd be like a terrorist as far as the White House is concerned—they wouldn't let me within 50 blocks...
...military base on Saudi soil...
...He's made a string of mistakes—the tariffs, the lousy education bill, overspending...
...LK My view is that CEOs became legends in their own minds and too damn—I don't know about powerful, but too damn egotistical...
...LK Larry still has some class-warrior instincts...
...TAS It's almost a cliche now: "O'Neill-Lindsey is no Rumsfeld-Cheney...
...LK It would be nice if the government assisted in this entrepreneurial adventure to create wealth and prosperity and improvements in technology...
...TAS So we've got a supply-s;der in orime time...
...I like the theory that the Democrats should be the war party—should be criticizing Bush from the right on the war, not the left...
...Forget Schumpeter—what we have now is what I call corporate balance-sheet deflation: Real interest rates are so high that every new dime of income that businesses get their hands on has to go into debt service, and they can't expand their operations...
...Not only were most of the 9/11 terrorists Saudis, but some 80% of the prisoners held at Guantanamo are Saudis, Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and recent evidence proves that Saudi Arabia has been a principal supporter both of al Qaeda and of Palestinian suicide bombers...
...Adam Smith argued that the free market could only work if it had an ethical foundation...
...Russia and Mexico have become reliable suppliers, and vast new oil fields around the Caspian Sea are coming on line...
...I've been saying this almost every night: Has the war already started...
...We've already seen the oil pop—that's the irony...
...The American Spectator talked with Kudlow in late August at the Manhattan offices of Kudlow & Co., his private economics and investment advisory firm...
...Everybody knows that the two biggest domestic issues in November are going to be perp walks and 201k's—that's what people's retirement plans have become...
...LK I actually think Americans are supply siders, if they're given the right choice...
...But dividends cut very close to the bone...
...He'll tell you he'd be for the investment tax credit...
...But for revenue purposes, maybe what you have to do is start somewhere between 50 and 75 percent...
...And if the Lord chooses to break us, then he will—you accept it and move on...
...Of all the Harvard guys, I always thought that Marty Feldstein was the smartest—well, Lindsey is smarter...
...TAS You're talking about CEOs...
...Actually it's an odd story—for a while they thought protectionism was the road to free trade...
...Cramer has gotten a lot better...
...And a small bunch of them were lining their own pockets at the expense of shareholders...
...But I don't think it's too much to ask these guys to take greater responsibility...
...TAS And what happened...
...They decided that to get trade-promotion authority—to be able to do free trade in the Americas and so forth—they had to buy off a couple of congressmen on steel...
...The principal thrust of the Bush administration is to win the war on terrorism...
...When 2-year Treasury rates are below the Fed rate—as it was from the spring of 2000 until the fall of 2001—you are in a deflationary crisis...
...In addition, if we can find Saudis of valor and vision, we should encourage them to lead their country to democracy...
...Why do companies have so much debt...
...TAS Why...
...TAS i...
...Trade Representative]Bob Zoellick persuaded Lindsey to tell Bush that it wouldn't have any economic impact, which was a huge miscalculation...
...LK In the mid-'90s...
...It's a little harsh, but remember, he was a minister, a churchman...
...If Bill Thomas is going to go to bat with this, you're going to get it...
...TAS What's the answer...
...Tax cutters win elections...
...It will change the whole structure of American corporate finance—you'll see far less reliance on borrowing...
...TAS What does the market do on the day we invade...
...On the day American troops invade Iraq, the stock market goes up 2,000 points...
...has considered Saudi Arabia our friend—and an important source of oil...
...LK Oh, I think we've done extremely well...
...Militant Islam thrives in Saudi Arabia...
...Let's get real here—the Fed has all the cards...
...And [U.S...
...Remember, the Truman Democrats were more or less the war party, and the Republicans were the isolationists...
...TAS So why did he oppose a cap gains cut...
...Forget Baghdad—we could literally take the oil fields...
...Senate—and he refused to rule out dividend reform...
...During the Gulf War, President Bush was prevented by the Saudi government from conducting a religious service on a U.S...
...And if you're not, your central bank will be...
...It's an hour show, in prime time, for heaven's sake...
...It ended the greatest boom in 75 years...
...And we're up to 350,000 viewers...
...LK One key player was [Federal Reserve Board Governor] Laurence Meyer, a brilliant Keynesian...
...capture Islamic terrorists...
...The problem today is that because of the technology revolution, new information is created rapidly and then it's disseminated rapidly...
...Tax them both at 20 percent...
...Now Smith was properly cynical about businessmen—he had this metaphor that if two businessmen get together, they conspire against the public...
...Wahhabism calls for the destruction of the United States and Israel and Western values, replacing them with totalitarian Islamist regimes and fundamentalist societies, similar to the one created by the Taliban in Afghanistan...
...They're an important hedging device, a huge insurance policy with very sophisticated financial engineering...
...And that ends it...
...The Fed's deflationary policies did not end until shortly after the terrorist bombing...
...He may be a registered Democrat—I don't know and I don't care—but he's a brilliant guy, and he's crusading for better disclosure on the so-called `third-party recipients' of derivative loans...
...TAS LK I keep telling people that Alfonse Soriano on the Yankees is having the greatest sophomore year in baseball, but George Bush can't say the same thing...
...They're the most important reason why the market crashed...
...At the beginning of all this, some conservatives criticized me...
...I'm convinced of that...
...Today, the Street is debating whether the Dow will get over 9,000—that's a very inter48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 You deserve a factual look at...
...TAS Is overall risk increasing or decreasing...
...And if that spread gets too far above the Fed funds rate, you have an inflation problem...
...He signed the capital gains tax cut over Rubin and Summers' objection...
...FLAME This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization...
...LK Right, starting with Paul O'Neill...
...TAS Well, that's like a brilliant astrologer--they're still delusionary...
...Today the gold market is the U.S...
...They are going to lose some money with respect to Enron and some others, but it's not important...
...In many ways the Theory of Moral Sentiments was more important than The Wealth of Nations, because it brought in the concepts of ethics and honesty...
...There's a brilliant chap in the Treasury Department, the undersecretary for domestic finance, Peter Fisher...
...So in effect when a mortgage lender makes a loan, they only assume a tiny portion of the risk...
...More importantly, I got a call the other day from the staff director at the Ways and Means Committee—they're looking at it too...
...I've done it...
...efforts to stop terrorism, many are asking whether this "friendship" still makes sense...
...TAS So, are they losing their religion or just looking at polls...
...LK The classic solution to high real interest rates is for the central bank to create a whole lot more money, just as 20 years ago Bob Mundell taught us the classic solution to negative interest rates—absorb money, steel the gold price, hard-en the value of the currency...
...The myth of our dependence on Saudi oil...
...as their customer much more than we need them as a supplier...
...LK You're not going to speed up the income tax cuts politically it's not going to happen...
...It's time to acknowledge that the Saudis are effectively waging a war against us—that they are behaving like enemies...
...LK Then he will go bankrupt and he will start again...
...TAS The evidence...
...and public executions and dismemberments are still practiced...
...I'll say that from my personal experience...
...LK We're in good shape...
...Above all, we should encourage our government to confront the hypocritical and dictatorial Saudi rulers...
...We're the only financial system on the globe that has a deep securitized and liquid lending system...
...TAS So what happened...
...Indeed, Saudi culture is barbarically restrictive: Woman may not drive and are treated as chattel by their husbands and by the regime...
...He used to say, Reaganesquely: `I'm going to do the right thing: If you don't want to re-elect me, you won't re-elect me: Rove used to say that, too, but we think Rove has changed...
...In 1995, they refused to hand over Imad Mughniyah, the likely perpetrator of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon...
...LK It's a real platform—I can propagate my world view...
...LK I think it's political calculations...
...Saudi oil policy has always been openly self-serving—the Saudis have threatened or implemented at least three oil embargoes over recent decades, including one in 1973-74 that triggered a deep economic crisis in the U.S...
...This is one of these `investor class' issues—increasing the capital-loss deduction is another...
...LK We looked at it during the Reagan years, and it got lost...
...Air Marshal kudlow On Cutting Taxes, Growing the Market fi Whacking Iraq How many supply-siding, flag-wearing Reaganauts get an hour every night in prime time to tout their friends, hold their enemies to the fire and lob political and intellectual hand grenades...
...You can be in Cambodia, and if you're in the financial business, you're going to be tied in to the U.S...
...I don't like it any-more than the next guy, but in the grand historical scheme of things, this is what I call a high-class problem...
...LK This worship of Rubin is completely misplaced—it was Greenspan and, ironically, Larry Lindsey, who was still a Fed member in 1994 and 1995, who wanted to strengthen the dollar...
...Yes, it would be great...
...But we need better disclosure...
...LK Well, yes—grow the economy properly, with the right incentive structure...
...TAS We're hearing talk again about the gold price as a potenially useful anchor...
...Take Citigroup and J.P...
...as .re dividends tats , ,ed...
...Now the White House can propose, and it's all very interesting, but the Ways and Means Committee makes tax policy in this country...
...TAS Someone should tell the White House...
...TAS Sometimes the cause is an outside force—look at the current deflation...
...TAS What's the answer...
...LK Who knows...
...LK Clinton was a semi-growth Democrat...
...And I said, `Wait a minute—I thought we believed in ethics and the rule of law...
...LK That's the key point...
...The oil market is telling you that we're going in now...
...If I had told you in 1978 that a 9,000 Dow would be regarded as a plunge .. . Come on...
...TAS What about derivatives...
...He was very good...
...WorldCom CEO] Bernie Ebbers was a small-town basketball coach what's he doing getting $400-million loans from his company that were not disclosed to the investors or to his own board...
...In reality, they have sold us oil when it served their financial and political purposes...
...Proper disclosure makes that currency sound...
...Larry Kudlow is on a roll, even if his tag-team partner is a Democrat, a former Wall Street bandit and alleged liberal...
...Fortunately, Saudi Arabia's reduced importance as a supplier to the U.S...
...And the Kennedy Democrats were the free-trading tax cutters...
...None of the basic freedoms held sacred by Western democracies—the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, rights for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, religious tolerance— is tolerated by the Saudis...
...I'm a conservative...
...TAS Explain...
...This was plain old-fashioned Keynesian, Phillips Curve, anti-growth policy...
...must reconsider its relationship with Saudi Arabia...
...The Saudis are not likely to cut us off, and if they do, we can obtain plentiful oil from other sources...
...I mean Kennedy was for tax cuts, a gold-backed dollar, free trade—I don't care how many women there were, his economics were terrific...
...servicewomen in Saudi Arabia must wear veils in public...
...Stoiber is going to beat Schroeder on the tax-cut platform...
...the CIA s on the ground in Kurdistan, LK On our show last night, that's what I said to Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...LK Even Greenspan finally got scared...
...he taught at Harvard...
...We bit the bullet...
...The son of a bitch gets all his money from the oil...
...There's no doubt about the risk—we saw it when Long-Term Capital blew up in 1998...
...But recently I've talked to all of them, the Bushies, and they are really pricing it out—a full-fledged dividend tax reform for business and individuals...
...The U.S...
...LK Larry Summers has had four jobs in his life...
...Do you think he knows anything about business...
...Kudlow & Cramer, airing nightly on CNBC, is the revenge of the investor classanti-airhead TV...
...LK Oddly enough, I would say that in the 30 years that I've been in the game, the answer is: decreased risk...
...It's a huge market, many trillions of dollars...
...And we don't know who the counter-party lenders are or what their credit looks like...
...TAS When did you go broke...
...That's one of the issues in the Enron debacle—through off-balance-sheet partnerships, they were hiding information from the market...
...TAS Nixon was the peace candidate...
...Go figure...
...LK We've got a hell of a prosperity—at the end of the day, the right measurement is growth and wealth and jobs, isn't it...
...LK I'm not cold-hearted, but financial tsunamis come and go...
...But it will be hashed out and proposed, and the election could in some way be a referendum on this...
...Saudi men routinely abduct their U.S...
...Not just dot-corn stocks were destroyed—good, old established techie companies like Intel and Microsoft and Dell Computer, which had real products, real profits, real business plans...
...TAS How about the Fed...
...These people suffered from moral amnesia, and it created a very bad aura or even aroma, if you will...
...he even flirted with a brand-new entitlement program, prescription drugs, that would have busted the budget...
...On taxes he completely lost his religion...
...The report labeled the kingdom "the most dangerous opponent of American interests in the Middle East...
...Morgan Chase—they are going to lose some money in Latin America...
...What was alarming was that no one knew enough about which American banks SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 47 "If I had told you in 1978 that a 9,000 Dow would be regarded as a plunge...
...People pick themselves up and start all over again...
...there's no question about it...
...TAS We know you love it, but is a grown-up thing...
...Treasury market—it has the greatest breadth, depth and resiliency of any financial market, by a factor of 10, if not greater...
...But rightly, they also want something constructive...
...Look at Europe: Chirac wins on a tax-cut platform, Berlusconi wins on a tax-cut plat-form...
...LK Gold was a global monetary instrument for many, many centuries...
...TAS We're talking billions here...
...Aren't the big banks exposed...
...LK I don't know about that...
...I'm a supply sider...
...It's just the acid bath Washington and Wall Street currently need...
...In the meantime, we must consider Saudi Arabia our enemy and consider this reality in our global fight against terrorism...
...I'm not saying, `Don't look at gold: But if it's the value of money you're interested in and the stability of the value of money, the real answer lies in the shape of the Treasury curve...
...Kozlowski used company funds to purchase the art and real estate.' And sure enough...
...citizen children, forcefully covert them to Islam and, if girls, press them into marriages – often polygamous ones...
...It's not because they aren't as smart—Larry Lindsey is a frigging genius...
...TAS You can make a case that we're already at '.var We have planes flying over-head north and south...
...The only new thing they've done is steel tariffs...
...The second reason is that our banks are healthier.We had our banking crisis 10, 12 years ago, and Japan's banks have been underwater for a decade...
...now allows us to make decisions based on human rights and our greater strategic interests, rather than solely on our energy needs...
...Despite friendly-sounding rhetoric from its leaders, the Saudi government refuses to assist the U.S...
...TAS Spoken like a man with his own bully pulpit, . LK In the late '80s, when I was making tons and tons of money at Bear Stearns, if you had asked me, `What do you want to do?' I would have given you a classic Wall Street answer: `Well I'm going to do this for a couple more years, and then I'm going to do what I really want to do.' Now, through God's grace, I am doing exactly what I want to do...
...But I'm a little worried about the Democrats in Washington, because I don't see the old boys—we haven't heard anything from Zell Miller or John Breaux in months...
...Is that fair...
...But why does the idea of cutting taxes to spur growth still have trouble getting traction in the real world...
...LK It's this stupid model, about deficits and bond rates...
...TAS That's totally against a trend in Washington, which is to regulate the distribution of information—to 'level the playing field.' Doesn't that just reduce everything to quarterly earnings reports and press releases...
...The fellow from Spain wins on a tax-cut platform...
...Bush him-self said `No October surprise,' which I regret in some ways I'm very hawkish on this issue...
...It was the stupidest decision they've made...
...they bought forest land...
...LK I plead guilty...
...For decades the U.S...
...I don't know about that side of the aisle, and we need them...
...he worked for the World Bank and the Treasury...
...Because they can get it and because it's cheaper than equity, on a tax basis...
...Larry Summers doesn't go down that road—he's too analytical...
...LK It goes up 2,000 points...
...LK That's the Achilles' heel...
...And a lot of the telecom companies were in effect hiding their balance sheets...
...Even he knew that there was some merit to it...
...he'd be for temporary depreciation reforms...
...it no longer is...
...Congress forced him and he went...
...Back on Wall Street in the early '90s, he crashed spectacularly—on alcohol and drugs, as he is not shy of saying—then roared back as an oracle of the tech-driven stock-market boom...
...People made mistakes—they were trying to save their companies...
...He believes conservative views are a terrible anathema to the voters...
...Come on...
...We have virtually no overhead...
...TAS V1'il' anvt'' ng happen before November) LK Probably not...
...How do they think businesses operate...
...For those of you who don't remember The American Spectator's incandescent March 2001 interview, Larry Kudlow is the unabashed bull who bounced from Wall Street and the New York Federal Reserve Bank to the Reagan administration's tax-cutting vanguard, the Office of Management and Budget...
Vol. 35 • September 2002 • No. 5
