http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/1...-pundit-head-council-economic-advisors/214851Trump Reportedly Considering Non-Economist CNBC Pundit To Head Council Of Economic Advisors
Media Explain Trump’s Decision: “Kudlow Isn’t An Economist, But He Plays One On TV”
President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly considering CNBC financial pundit and conservative political commentator Larry Kudlow to replace economist Jason Furman as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). Kudlow built his career in conservative media as an advocate of failed trickle-down economic policies, and he is notorious for making faulty predictions and sharing misleading analyses. He may soon be rewarded for those efforts with one of the most prestigious economic jobs in the United States.
According to a December 15 report from The Detroit News, discredited right-wing economic pundit and Trump adviser Stephen Moore told the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce that the president-elect planned to name Kudlow as the chairman of the CEA before the end of the week. Moore later told the paper that he “misspoke” and that Kudlow is “on the short list” for a CEA appointment, but it is not “a done deal.”
As The Washington Post pointed out, Kudlow’s rumored consideration for a key White House appointment is “another unorthodox pick” for the incoming administration because Kudlow “lacks a graduate or undergraduate degree in economics and has not written scholarly papers on the subject.” As has been the case with more than a dozen Trump appointees and rumored selections, Kudlow’s primary qualification for serving as the president’s chief economist is that “he plays one on TV,” as David Dayen explained in The Nation:
The overriding quality necessary for landing a position in Donald Trump’s administration is that Trump has to know you from TV. Most of his cabinet selections have logged plenty of time in cable-news green rooms.
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So in that context, floating Larry Kudlow to run the Council of Economic Advisers is perfectly apt. Kudlow isn’t an economist, but he plays one on TV. And more important, he confidently (and usually wrongly) favors what has to be seen as the dominant economic gospel of the Trump administration: tax cuts.
Over the course of his long career as a right-wing media personality, Kudlow has become synonymous with the failed trickle-down economic agenda favored by conservative politicians. He has also established a track record of being “usually wrong and frequently absurd” with faulty predictions and analysis that could undermine the economic security of hardworking Americans. As outlined by The Huffington Post, Kudlow’s “spectacular record of wrongness” may be what makes him a “perfect” adviser for Trump.
Kudlow Totally Missed The Financial Crisis, Refused To Acknowledge Recession
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an award-winning nonprofit research organization that is perhaps best-known for determining a chronology of American business cycles and recessions, the Great Recession began in December 2007. Yet Kudlow published blogs on December 5, 6, and 7 of that year titled “The Recession Debate Is Over,” “There Ain’t No Recession,” and “Bush Boom Continues,” in the conservative National Review. By July 2008, as the unemployment rate continued to balloon in the seventh month of recession, Kudlow was still arguing in National Review that there was no recession or housing crisis. In May 2016, having finally come to terms with reality of the housing crash, Kudlow co-authored an op-ed in the right-wing Washington Times blaming Bill and Hillary Clinton because of a legislative initiative in the 1990s that made lines of credit more accessible to low-income families.
Kudlow Is A Notorious Poor-Shamer
During a March 2016 appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Kudlow participated in a panel discussion where he lectured single parents in low-income families about poverty despite professing to have “virtually no knowledge in this field.” He bragged that he is "ignorant" of many issues facing such families, but said he felt he could speak to them because "there's enough documentation for ignorant people" to talk effectively about the supposed cause-effect relationship between poverty and single parenting. In November 2014, Kudlow spoke on the same subject at the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. Kudlow also used his National Review blog to promote a column by right-winger Cal Thomas that praised his misleading remarks. Kudlow’s position that marriage is a silver bullet solution to poverty is common among right-wing media personalities and conservative politicians, but the idea has been completely discredited by experts.
Kudlow Thought War In The Middle East Might Boost The Stock Market
In a June 2002 column, Kudlow lamented that “the economy is doing fine but the stock market is slumping” and argued that “decisive shock therapy to revive the American spirit would surely come with a U.S. invasion of Iraq.” Kudlow apparently hoped newfound wartime confidence and a surge of military spending would inflate the economy, but as economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) concluded in a May 2007 report on the economic impact of the Iraq War, “Military spending drains resources from the productive economy.” Kudlow’s views Middle Eastern warfare and the stock market were not isolated in Iraq, in an August 2006 column, he claimed that “global investors are cheering Israel’s advance” in a war against Lebanese fighters that left thousands of soldiers and civilians killed or injured.
Kudlow Is A Climate Science Denier
Media Matters conducted a study of CNBC’s coverage of climate change in 2013, finding that several CNBC figures, including Kudlow, denied the science of man-made climate change altogether. Kudlow attempted to further muddy the waters on climate science in an October 2014 blog by hyping a deeply flawed op-ed published by the conservative Wall Street Journal that misleadingly claimed “Climate Science Is Not Settled.” Kudlow’s continued aversion to the scientific consensus on climate change presents problems for U.S. economic stability, as dozens of business and industry leaders have already begun taking climatic shifts into account in their long-term planning.
Kudlow Actually Disagrees With Trump On Trade
One of the few economic policies at the core of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was his opposition to major international trade deals. He spent months attacking his opponents for their support of free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and promised to immediately withdraw from the deal after taking office. Kudlow has been a major TPP supporter and wrote in a May 1, 2015, column for National Review that “Obama deserves credit” for trying to get the deal signed and ratified. In a March 11 column for CNBC, in which he responded to severe criticism from fellow conservatives, Kudlow stated, “I continue to oppose Donald Trump’s trade policies.”
So, Trum's pick to head Council Of Economic Advisors is someone who :
- pretends to be an economist but is not one
- is known for being hugely wrong in his economic analysis
- supports policies that are the very opposite of what Trump said he during the campaign
I guess this is one more 3d-chess genius move by Trump. Or is he also trolling those who voted for him because they fthought that, contrary to Hillary, he does care for the people ?
