Boy, I’ll tell you what, Fox News is having one helluva day when it comes to cramming lies down the throat of the American public.
And look, that’s saying something. Because Fox’s raison d’être is lying to the public. So when they’re doing so much lying (or otherwise giving Trump administration officials a forum from which to lie) that it merits special mention, well then that’s truly remarkable.
Earlier today, former CNBC star (and current embodiment of the phrase “what the actual fuck?“) Maria Bartiromo, hosted a characteristically smug Steve Mnuchin who was trotted out to refute “rumors” that Trump is still hell-bent on pulling the U.S. out of the WTO.
That went about like you would imagine and the defining moment was when Steve gave the old wink, wink to Maria about “fake news”:
You're welcome… pic.twitter.com/MUNpopm5mz
— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) June 29, 2018
Well, Maria also hosted fellow CNBC alumn (and “Gordon Gekko doll, original, in box”) Larry Kudlow, for a discussion about Trump’s economic “miracle.” Here’s what Larry had to say about the deficit:
Got that? “The deficit is coming down and it’s coming down rapidly.”
No, Larry, it’s not. That is a demonstrable, bald-faced lie. Period. Everyone knows the deficit is exploding – that’s the main criticism of Trump’s fiscal policy.
As WaPo correctly notes, “there is no publicly available justification for [Kudlow’s] claim.”
But that reminder is for public consumption – that is, it’s meant to communicate to the layperson that what Kudlow is saying has no basis in reality. For those of us who spend our time steeped in this debate, Kudlow’s contention is flat out laughable. All anyone has been talking about for months on end is the deficit.
Just ask Jeff Gundlach, who earlier this month said this in a webcast:
It’s pretty much unprecedented that we’re seeing this level debt expansion so late in an economic cycle. Increasing the size of the deficit while we’re raising interest rates almost seems like a suicide mission.
Or just ask Goldman, who wrote this earlier this year:
Federal fiscal policy is entering uncharted territory [as] Congress has voted twice in the last two months to substantially expand the budget deficit despite an already elevated debt level and an economy that shows no need for additional fiscal stimulus. While most of the recent fiscal expansion has not come as a surprise to us, this nevertheless raises new questions about the plan for US fiscal policy.
Or hell, just ask the CBO, which in April projected that the deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020, two years ahead of previous estimates (and I’ve embedded the full CBO report at the bottom of this post for those who are inclined to review it in light of Kudlow’s demonstrable lies):
For God’s sake, the CBO issued a report just 48 hours ago (it’s also embedded in full below) that contained this passage and idiot-proof (but not Kudlow-proof) visual:
In CBO’s projections, the federal budget deficit, relative to the size of the economy, would grow substantially over the next several years, stabilize for a few years, and then grow again over the rest of the 30-year period. In total, deficits would rise from 3.9 percent of GDP in 2018 to 9.5 percent in 2048. (Adjusted to exclude the effects of timing shifts that occur because fiscal year 2018 began on a weekend, the budget deficit in 2018 would be higher, at 4.2 percent of GDP).3 Those large budget deficits would arise because spending would grow steadily under current law, and revenues would not keep pace with that spending growth.
If you need more, you can read all about it here:
- Goldman Warns On U.S. Fiscal Policy: ‘We Are Heading Into Uncharted Territory’
- ‘Is Nobody Gonna Tell Him?’ MAGA And The Pedal To The Metal Economy
- ‘This Is Poorly-Timed’: Credit Suisse Ups Rate Hike Forecast Amid Budget Boondoggle
- Albert Edwards: ‘Trump’’s Grotesquely Ill-Timed Stimulus Will Be Trigger For Market Implosion, Recession’
Of course Kudlow knows better. Or maybe he doesn’t. This is the same old bullshit that he’s been pushing for years. Basically this: “We’ll make up for it in growth”.
That’s bullshit. No we won’t. And you won’t hear any mea culpas when this turns out exactly like it always turns out. Especially not from Maria Bartiromo who, as CBS dryly notes, “did not appear to challenge him on that statement.”
Are you kidding?!!
If Maria challenges Larry on live TV, she’ll never get him or prolly any other Admin officials for an interview.
I miss Mark Haines, he was the last sheriff on financial TV.
Massive tax cuts for the filthy rich? Check. Falling revenues and increasing social spending? Check. All systems go. Time to roll out the next cuts to the things that benefit the majority. Like the past 40 years, the beat goes on. This country needs a good shot of socialism, a shot that will make the moneyed class whimper and pray for the benevolent tax code of the 1980s.
Kudlow is such a hypocrite. He’s also publicly telling the Fed to back off on interest rates. What happened to the Fed’s independence from political bias?
So the deficit is decreasing, according to Kudlow, and interest rate hikes need to be tempered down. That’s a great combination for encouraging more reckless spending by the government. That’s great Larry, This is the world according to Larry. Who cares about what’s actually good for our future economic growth. Just keep those rates down, let the government continue to jack up the deficit, and just give him all those beautifully inflated financial asset bubbles.
I’m all for being careful about interest rates and recessionary pressure, but Larry doesn’t care about these things. He really doesn’t. He’s more concerned about doubling his 25M net worth prior to retirement via ever increasingly inflated asset bubbles. He’s more concerned about giving more slack to the government relative to spending via continued low interest rates. He’s thinking about his exit, his retirement.
Keep that growth going and don’t worry about the ramifications of trillions upon trillions of dollars of fiscal debt, right Larry? How about some throwing in some more good old QE too Larry?
Larry Kudlow has been known to glibly quote the 18th-19th century economist Jean Baptiste Say by stating that “Supply creates its own demand”. On the face of it, this is the economic equivalent of the long discredited theory in chemistry known as spontaneous generation. Digging a little deeper, as Larry has done on occasion, yields something akin to the economic equivalent of perpetual motion. Another discredited theory.(No, time crystals are not perpetual motion systems because the state must be maintained). Say claimed that every good produced and/or service provided begets further commensurate production of goods and/or provision of services. This was not a valid statement in Say’s day, and continues to ring falsely. A significant portion of wealth generated then and now is stored in assets and/or as savings. Assets and savings are neither goods nor services. To claim that at some point in the indefinite future those assets and savings will be converted into goods and/or services is a hollow contention. Throughout history wealth has been horded without a commensurate conversion of that wealth into the production of goods and/or the provision of services, and it continues today in spades. This utterly specious notion lies at the heart of Larry Kudlow’s economic paradigm. This why I say that Larry preaches the Gospel According to Peter Pan. To more thoroughly understand just how obtuse(an homage to Andy Dufresne) Larry’s economic views are read the Washington Post’s opinion piece dated 3/15/18 entitled “Larry Kudlow may have been more wrong about the economy than anyone alive”. Anyone with sense and sensibility who reads this article and then attempts to look at the economic world through Larry’s eyes should be prompted to pose the same question that Queen did in “Bohemian Rhapsody”: “Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy?”. The answer should be obvious.
When is the last time the US ran a public account deficit over 5% of GDP??
When Trump first announced Kudlow as his choice, I wrote that his choice’s brain was fried, thereby preemptively handing him a permanent excuse – so to speak – for all the stupid, idiotic and false statements I expected him to babble on bahalf of Destrcuto, his new patron saint.
Between fried brain, heart attack, turning 70 and carrying the burden of Director of the US National Economic Council and having a saint up his ass, he has not disappointed any of my expecations.