Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:11:01 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Lawrence Kudlow :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Lawrence+Kudlow istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/win-win-for-taxpayers/86765/ Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The single-biggest mistake in the Paulson bank-rescue-plan marketing effort has been the failure to explain clearly how taxpayers are going to recoup $700 billion used to buy toxic assets at auction in order to unfreeze the banking system. In other words, folks don't understand how taxpayers will be paid back, and may actually make profits, which will enable the new government debt to be erased after the Treasury bank-rescue is completed. Here's the key point: Any loan package bought by the... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/give-paulson-a-clean-bill/86470/ Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Honestly. A clean bill as requested by Treasury man Henry Paulson, along with John McCain's oversight board, can help fix the credit-crunch problem. It needn't be this hard. According to the Paulson plan, distressed assets will be sold by banks through a reverse auction (the low bid wins) to various investment funds, hedgies, private-equity boys, and other banks. And taxpayers will have a strong ownership position in these asset sales. When the assets are worked out over time — as they will be... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/never-sell-america-short/86237/ Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST We can fix this. If nothing else, that's the message I hope readers take away from this column. Of course, the "this" is the run on the world banking system. Stock markets have plunged globally, gold prices have shot up, and U.S. Treasury-bill rates have plummeted to 10 basis points, the lowest since the 1950s. We're witnessing a desperate flight to safety by investors. Folks are running away from financial assets and financial institutions simply because confidence has disappeared. This week... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/paulsons-courageous-action/85934/ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Treasury Secretary Paulson is the man of the hour. This weekend he drew a clear line in the sand: no more federal bailouts. Not for Lehman Brothers. Not for global insurer AIG. Not for Merrill Lynch. Not for anyone, at least as of this writing. It was a gutsy decision for the former Wall Street bigwig. Mr. Paulson came to Washington two years ago thinking he could reform Social Security and perhaps the tax system as well. In the process he hoped to clean up the federal budget books, maintain an... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/determined-to-win-the-fight/85753/ Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST It's so much fun reading the newspapers these days. The Sarah surge continues to dominate all the political news while the Palin-McCain — er, McCain-Palin — ticket is forging ahead in the polls. But let's be fair. Even though Senator McCain is now riding Governor Palin's skirt tails, he was the one who made the brilliant decision to put her on the ticket. And the louder the Left screams the better Sarah seems to do. So much better that for the first time the Intrade pay-to-play prediction... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/wall-street-on-gop-the-background-on-john/85237/ Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Wall Street on G.O.P. On CNBC this week Jack Welch, GE's chief executive officer from that firm's salad days in the 1980s and 1990s, pointed out the dangers of a three-house Democratic sweep. He says it's dangerous for both the stock market and the economy. And he wants to know why the St. Paul Republicans aren't running against Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. Mr. Welch made the point that the last time the Democrats had control of all three houses in Washington the Jimmy Carter... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/palin-is-our-energy-answer/85154/ Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The no. 1 economic issue this election is gasoline prices at the pump. The tax-hike effect of surging oil on global markets that has translated to a huge spike at your local gas station has drained the economy of its vitality. It has damaged consumer purchasing power, made it tougher to pay mortgages on time, worsened the credit crunch, raised the inflation rate, undermined corporate profits, and thrown stocks into the first bear market in five years. Of course, with all the political hoopla... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/winners-tax-strategy/84799/ Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST There's no Obama-Biden bounce according to the latest tracking polls. In fact, as of yesterday morning, Scott Rasmussen reports a 47-46 one-point lead for Senator McCain. Gallup has the race even, and indicates that conservative Democrats — including married women — are peeling away from Obama-Biden. Has a McCain bounce occurred during the Democratic convention? It's not out of the question. Senator Clinton gave a strong speech Tuesday night, at one point invoking a powerful Reaganesque sense... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/a-flip-flop-in-the-right-direction/84051/ Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Lo and behold, Team Obama is moving toward the supply-side and pivoting toward the political center on key aspects of its tax policy. Writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, two of Senator Obama's advisers, Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, outlined a plan that would only raise tax rates on capital-gains and dividends to 20% from 15% for individuals making more than $200,000 and on family incomes above $250,000. Prior to this, investors worried that Mr. Obama would double the 15% tax rate on... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/drill-drill-drill-is-working/83192/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST As Senator McCain and the Republican leadership nationalize the drill, drill, drill message, the Republican Party might conceivably be riding a summer political rally. The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election. Is there a Republican tsunami in the making? According to the major polls, Mr. McCain has overcome a big deficit to pull even with Senator Obama. Meanwhile... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/talking-real-reform/82852/ Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST There will be no more business as usual for housing lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if Senator McCain is elected president. That's Mr. McCain's clear message in a recent hard-hitting oped in the St. Petersburg Times and in various straight-talk interviews with the press. Politically powerful Fannie and Freddie may be popping champagne corks in Washington, where a congressional bailout package provides full government backing for their outsized management pay packages, massive... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/moral-hazard-of-fannie-freddie/81851/ Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST 'Too big to fail" was the verdict in the U.S. Treasury decision to backstop mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But is the taxpayer risk of moral hazard still as big as ever? Investors trashed shares of these government-sponsored enterprises last week, knocking them down almost 50% on a wave of bankruptcy rumors. A former St. Louis Fed president, Bill Poole, argued that technically, the two already are in bankruptcy, while fears spread they couldn't even raise overnight money to... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/an-america-first-energy-plan/81200/ Wed, 2 Jul 2008 22:15:12 EST President Bush was on message Wednesday in a Rose Garden news conference when he kept up the pressure on his a drill, drill, drill offensive. He said he knows Americans are worried about gasoline prices, and said he wants them "to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways." He specifically mentioned opening up ANWR, the outer continental shelf, and oil-shale exploration. He also took a whack at lawmakers, saying "the... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/wheres-bernankes-inner-volcker/80817/ Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST On the day after an unusually important Fed policy meeting both gold and stocks severely rebuked the central bank's decision to take no action in support of the weak dollar or to curb rapidly growing inflation. Gold spiked $30, a clear message that Bernanke & Co. won't stop inflation. Stocks plunged over 200 points, an equally clear message that the Fed's cheap-dollar inflation is damaging economic growth. These market warnings are two sides of the same coin. Inflation, which is caused by... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/mccain-says-no-to-pork/79743/ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Senator McCain moved decisively to the supply-side Tuesday in a strong speech to the National Small Business Summit in Washington, D.C. For investors, small-business owner-operators, and the vast majority of middle-class Americans who go to work every day and are concerned about Mr. McCain's tax vision, this speech is good news. Big Mac is the taxpayer-friendly candidate. The Republican candidate for president embraced low-tax-rate incentives to grow the economy, promising a combination of... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/more-oil-more-jobs-better-wages/79637/ Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The recent spike in oil prices and unemployment is dramatically changing this presidential campaign — virtually overnight. The near $20 jump in oil to $140 a barrel, the unexpected half-point increase in the jobless rate to 5.5%, the biggest monthly increase in 20 years, and the resulting 400-point plunge in stocks has created a new campaign issue right before our eyes. Public worry No. 1 is now oil, jobs, and the economy, with the inflationary woes of the American dollar right underneath. The... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bernankes-making-dollar-sense/79238/ Wed, 4 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, made big news Tuesday by singling out the weak foreign-exchange value of the American dollar as the principal culprit in "the unwelcome rise in import prices and consumer price inflation." Are you watching this, John McCain? Mr. Bernanke is signaling a major policy shift on the dollar. In his speech, via satellite to a conference in Barcelona, Spain, he said Fed policy and the underlying strength of the American economy "will be key factors... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/coal-cap-disaster/78711/ Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Tuesday's Wall Street Journal strongly editorializes against the Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade plan that supposedly will solve our alleged problem with global warming — now called climate change. This plan is very similar to the one Senator McCain announced two weeks ago. The Journal argues that cap-and-trade "would impose the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s," including a huge tax increase, higher prices across-the-board, and significant losses... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/striking-out-on-energy/76636/ Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 EST President Bush and Senator McCain went to bat on energy policy this week. And guess what? They both struck out. Mr. Bush went hat in hand to the Saudis to ask for more oil production in order to bring down world prices. He whiffed. They said no for the second time this year. ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson said it's "astonishing" that Mr. Bush keeps asking Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, rather than working harder for increased oil production at home. Mr. Tillerson called this... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bushs-r-is-for-right/75846/ Mon, 5 May 2008 00:00:00 EST President Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country. About a month ago he told reporters, "We're not in a recession, we're in a slowdown." At a White House news conference a few weeks later, despite the fact that reporters pressed him to use the "R" word, Mr. Bush refused. And on Friday, after the most recent jobs report — which produced a much-smaller-than-expected decline in corporate payrolls, a huge 362,000 increase in the more entrepreneurial household survey (the... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/why-not-blame-obama/75201/ Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST It's rather amusing watching the liberal press launch a full-scale attack on George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, with General Tom Shales of the Washington Post leading the charge. Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mr. Gibson of ABC had the audacity to ask Mr. Obama some tough questions during the Democratic debate last week. Challenge Mr. Obama with well-informed questions on tax policy and politics? Wound the press favorite? How dare they? The fallout is fascinating. With members of the mainstream... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-price-freedom/74811/ Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Surprise, surprise. Having failed to puncture General Petraeus's story about great improvements on the ground in Iraq, liberals are now saying the cost of the Iraq war has somehow undermined the economy — even caused the current slowdown. What complete nonsense. First point: The U.S. has spent roughly $750 billion for the five-year war. Sure, that's a lot of money. But the total cost works out to 1% of the $63 trillion gross domestic product over that time period. It's miniscule. But here's the... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bernanke-kind-of-guy/73580/ Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST I have really learned to like Ben Bernanke. He's the man. And his interest-rate cuts are vastly more effective than the so-called economic-stimulus rebate plan coming out of Congress and the White House. Why do I say this? Simple. I just got my latest adjustable-rate mortgage statement from the bank. When I originally refinanced this loan, it was 5.75%. And last summer my ARM soared to 8.25%. But guess what? Through February it has round-tripped all the way back to 6%. So I'm now saving $2,000... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/and-why-not-optimism/73291/ Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST What exactly is wrong with an optimistic president who has confidence in the long-run future of the American economy? President Bush took this stance in a recent interview with me and at the Economic Club of New York. He told me, "Like any free market, there's also downturns, and we're in one. But I am confident in the long-term strength of our economy." Optimism, after all, is one of the few levers our chief executive can use every day. By remaining optimistic, Mr. Bush is borrowing a page... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/why-bear-stearns-fell/73092/ Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST Did Bear Stearns really need to go down in flames? It's a question that needs to be asked, and my answer is no. Of course, I don't know the value of Bear Stearns's assets, and whether they could have served as collateral for private or government loans. So I cannot be entirely certain that my answer is correct. But here's how I see it: Since the elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 — a move that broke down the wall separating commercial and investment banks that had existed since the... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/job-for-mccain/72358/ Wed, 5 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST If Senator McCain wants to run as a candidate of change and if he's interested in distancing himself from President Bush on some issues, he should reverse the declining fortunes of the Bush wartime dollar, as America's prestige is on the line. With inflation spurting in America the sinking dollar is being ridiculed both at home and overseas. The falling dollar is perceived as a sign of American decline — which is a very bad sign. Main Street voters hate soaring food and gasoline prices... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/clinton-is-over/71645/ Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Barack Obama's landslide victory in Wisconsin. The race is over. Hillary Clinton is over. Her electability is over. Bill Clinton's political invincibility is over. The Clinton Restoration is over. It's over. Mr. Obama got to the far left faster than Hillary did. He out-organized her, out-fundraised her, out-speechified her, out-hustled her, out-dressed her, and out-presidentialed her. He outbid Hillary for votes, one promised government... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obamas-big-government-vision/71365/ Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Senator Obama is very gloomy about America, and he's aligning himself with the liberal wing of the democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation's rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing — exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn't want to hear. Mr. Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/mccains-democratic-appeal/71085/ Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Some things in life are quite simple. Here's one of them: Senator John McCain is going to be our next president. How do I know? For starters, Mr. McCain will have a unified Republican party — conservatives and all — working hard for him. He's also going to win over the Reagan Democrats, the Bush Democrats, and the Perot independents. These folks demand a strong military, want government off their backs, and are sick and tired of growing federal deficits and out-of-control spending. Mr. McCain's... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bernankes-next-challenge/70990/ Fri, 8 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Charlie Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, warned this week about the risks of inflation, overly aggressive interest rate cuts, and further damage being done to the Fed's credibility. I agree with Mr. Plosser. I say this as a supporter of the "shock and awe" Fed policies that brought the fed funds target rate down to its present 3% from 5.25%. These aggressive actions were necessary, and they've paid off. The target rate is now properly below the 10-year bond yield... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/capitalism-doesnt-work/70167/ Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Bill Gates, bloviating at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is issuing a clarion call for a "kinder capitalism" to aid the world's poor. Mr. Gates says he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He thinks it's failing much of the world. This, of course, from a guy who's worth around $35 billion, give or take a billion. Don't you just love it? A guy without a college degree who invented a new technology process in his garage that literally changed the entire world... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-republicans-want-now/69472/ Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST The New Hampshire primary may not have confirmed who's going to win the GOP nomination — or the Democratic nomination for that matter. But it just may have told us where voting Republicans stand on the economy and supply-side policy. Exit polls in New Hampshire reveal that the most important issue for Republican voters is the economy at 31%, trailed by the war in Iraq at 24%, illegal immigration at 23%, and terrorism at 18%. Overall, 54 % of New Hampshire voters said that reducing the budget... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/its-not-rocket-science/69044/ Mon, 7 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Yes, corporate profits are slowing and jobs are softening. Despite 52 months of ongoing jobs gains and 1.3 million new payrolls in the past year, December jobs registered only 18,000 and the unemployment rate ticked back up to (a still historically low) 5%. Despite years of gains from a booming business sector, corporate profits are in fact falling at about a 6% clip. But the last thing we need now is root-canal economic populism from the campaign trail and the mainstream media telling us that... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bushs-very-good-year/68547/ Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Against all odds, and despite the usual drumbeat of criticism, President Bush has had a very good year. The troop surge in Iraq is succeeding. America remains safe from terrorist attacks. And the Goldilocks economy is outperforming all expectations. At his year-end news conference, Mr. Bush stated with optimism that the economy is fundamentally sound, despite the housing downturn and the sub-prime credit crunch. The very next day, that optimism was reinforced with news of the best consumer... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bernanke-blows-smoke/68148/ Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve blew smoke at the markets last week, and markets blew smoke right back. Nothing was solved in terms of the growing global credit crisis, the result of a sub-prime virus that continues to infect money and capital markets everywhere. Instead of taking aggressive action with a half-point shock-and-awe rate cut, the Fed opted for a timid quarter-point cut. The result was a sharp drop in stocks around the world. It then announced a more generous discount-window lending... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/providing-new-oxygen/67805/ Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Following last week's solid jobs report, the New York Times got back to its Bush-bashing recession mantra with the front-page headline: "Slowing Growth and Jobs Seen as Ominous Sign for the Economy." This chant has been going on for quite some time. Doom and gloom from the economic pessimists has been political sport for seven years, even though the Bush boom just celebrated its sixth anniversary. The current expansion is now in its 74th month — 17 months longer than the average 57-month... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stock-market-politics/67013/ Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST There was some revealing information in the three-year forecast recently published by the Federal Reserve. It looks like Ben Bernanke & Co. are dissing high oil and gold prices and the sagging dollar as influences on future inflation. Instead they basically see 2% inflation — both headline and core — in 2008, 2009, and 2010. The Fed also sees Goldilocks — type economic growth — not too hot, not too cold — for the next three years. For 2008, an election year, the Fed is looking at 2.1% growth... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/thompsons-new-fire/66749/ Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST An energetic and forceful Fred Thompson sat down with me last week on "Kudlow and Company" to talk politics and the economy. The former Tennessee senator was in good form — more animated than I've seen him, and definitely a different person than the one I interviewed six months ago. I asked him about the former Republican House majority leader, Dick Armey. Mr. Armey recently predicted that Hillary Clinton will be the next president, reasoning that the GOP has departed from the first principles... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/one-on-one-with-romney/66686/ Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST In the strongest possible terms, Mitt Romney told me in an interview Friday that the push-polling attacks in Iowa on his Mormon faith are un-American. "This is the week of Thanksgiving," an emotional Mr. Romney said. "This is a time when we are going to be sitting down with our families and celebrating the founding of a country, which was established in part recognizing our tolerance for religions. People came here to seek religious freedom. And on this week of all weeks for a campaign, or... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/on-a-roll-2007-11-09/66205/ Fri, 9 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST While Hillary Clinton is slipping in the polls, Rudy Giuliani is on a roll. This is a big swing of momentum. Even the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll puts the two frontrunners in a dead heat. Senator Clinton was hurt badly by her flip-flopping performance in last month's Democratic debate. America's mayor, on the other hand, just got a hugely important endorsement from Reverend Pat Robertson. The message to social conservatives is clear: It's now okay to vote for Rudy. Why Rudy? Mr... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/greatest-story-never-told-2007-11-02/65769/ Fri, 2 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST If things are so bad, why are they so good? With all the gloom coming out of Wall Street, the Democrats on the campaign trail, and the mainstream press, a remarkable thing just happened: Real gross domestic product, the best summary report of the American economy, came in at a breathtaking 3.9% annual rate for the third quarter. In fact, following the 3.8% growth rate for the second quarter, the U.S. economy has posted its strongest quarterly growth in four years. The economy actually appears... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/restoring-king-dollar/64968/ Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Sometime in the latter half of the 1990s I coined the phrase "King Dollar." This was back in the post-Soviet collapse period when the U.S. greenback ruled the world currency roost. As the Berlin Wall came down, taking totalitarian socialism with it, global investors and businesses sought the U.S. dollar as their currency of choice. They also chose the American model of free-market capitalism — including supply-side reductions in marginal tax rates — as their economic reform of choice. The... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/scoring-the-feds-gymnastics/64152/ Mon, 8 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST In politics and on the campaign trail, flip-flops can be very damaging. But Ben Bernanke's whopper of a policy flip-flop two months ago turned out to be a big positive for financial markets and the economy, and may even help reverse the sinking fortunes of the GOP. The flip-flop itself is a tale of two Bernanke's: On the afternoon of August 7, the Federal Reserve chair was an inflation hawk — according to the unchanged FOMC policy statement — fearful of adding liquidity to the markets. By day's... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/goldilocks-20/62782/ Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST A batch of economy-wide stats was released Friday morning, covering retail sales, industrial production, import prices, and consumer confidence. The verdict? It's a 2% economy. Call it Goldilocks 2.0. Might the current financial turmoil throttle back growth a little more in the next six months? Yes, perhaps. Will there be some negative earnings surprises, especially from financial companies? Sure. But the bears would have us believe the subprime credit virus heralds the end of the world. They... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fed-can-fix-this/62271/ Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST A simple yet overlooked thought in the current debate about the health of the economy, the subprime credit virus, and the proper role of Federal Reserve monetary policy is this: you don't have credit blowups, liquidity freezes, dysfunctional commercial paper markets, suspect bank loan quality — nor do these ailments spill over into London and European money markets — when central bank policies are easy and accommodative. Financial panics and overly stressed markets are symptomatic of tight and... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/big-easys-boondoggle/61620/ Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST So, the president and Mrs Bush went down to New Orleans to commemorate the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Who knows? Maybe over a lattι with leading Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards they discussed spending even more money down there. After all, everyone seems to be saying New Orleans needs more cash. Here's a pop quiz: How much money has Uncle Sam spent on New Orleans and the Gulf region since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart? I'll give you... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/caught-in-a-tizzy/60760/ Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Wall Street remains caught in a tizzy over a power outage in the credit markets. But Main Street is in fine economic shape, according to the latest reports out of Washington. Industrial production — one of the most important coincident indicators out there — is steadily rebounding. Overall, it's up 2.9% annually over the past three months. Manufacturing is up 4.7%. Auto output has increased 19.4%. Computers and office equipment are up a whopping 25%. These are big numbers. And Americans are... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/main-street-leads-wall-street/60405/ Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The Wall Street brainiacs are panicked about subprime mortgages and the current stock market correction. But Main Street investors — with their plentiful incomes and longer-term stock market horizons — may ultimately bail them out. Main Street rescuing Wall Street? It's a compelling thought — not only for the stock market, but the economy at large. While Wall Street was busy conjuring up high-yielding bond packages that were heavily invested in unsustainable subprime mortgages — and... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/not-a-time-to-lose-faith/59424/ Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Stock market bulls like myself were on the losing side of this week's trading as the Dow gave back roughly 4% from its 14,000 peak. The big story was a wave of high anxiety credit fears over the value of corporate and housing loans. Credit circuits blew a fuse, lending markets temporarily froze, and a number of buyout deals were postponed as analysts and traders worked through their problems. But this is no time to lose faith. The economy has found its legs with a 3.4% gross domestic product... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/give-credit-where-it-is-due/58779/ Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST It has been widely reported that President Bush simply refuses to turn against the surge in Iraq, or even compromise on it. At the same time he admonishes Congress to toss out troop-withdrawal timetables and to give General Petraeus's new counterinsurgency plan time to work. And you know what? While the Democrats stand against near all of the president's wartime policies — and in the process court defeat — the stock market is standing with Mr. Bush, and the chance for victory. Early last week...