Mr. Biden has turned a boom into a bust. His State Department keeps begging the Iranians for a deal.
There are a few things on my mind these days.
First is a nice-looking stock market rally, with the Dow rising 1,350 some-odd points over the past couple of days. It was kind of out of the blue after the dismal third quarter.
Year-to-date, we are still in bear market territory, with the S&P 500 down 21 percent from its earlier highs.
Now, permit me to ruminate. First, I always like it when America's portfolio goes up.
The latest Gallup survey shows 58 percent of Americans are invested in stocks in one way or another — through their 401(k)s, pension funds, and whatnot. That could come to nearly 150 million people, a big number.
President Biden doesn’t pay any attention to the stock market. He and his wokesters think it’s all rigged by a bunch of rich people. But they are wrong. They don’t believe in free markets, let alone stock markets.
Middle American working folks are in the market. And they’ve had a rough time of it lately. But I’m glad there are some happy moments, at least for a couple of days.
Not to be a killjoy, however, but a stagflationary economy with a lot more Fed tightening ahead of us and lower corporate profit markdowns — remember, profits are the mother’s milk of stocks — makes me think this relief rally based on short covering will not change the overall bearish trend.
Some people are saying the weak JOLTS report Tuesday, with 1.1 million fewer job openings, following yesterday's weak ISM manufacturing report, suggests less Fed tightening and lower interest rates. In other words, bad news is good news. I never liked that logic.
Personally, I always think good news is good news. Good news is strong growth, price stability, and a sound king dollar. More people working and prospering. And good news is never recession.
I don't like perverse logic. Just saying. But, but, but, but: you can safely bet on America and its capitalist prosperity in the long term.
This little progressive, socialist interlude is going to be cleaned out before too long. That's why I always agree with professors Burton Malkiel of Princeton and Jeremy Siegel of Penn — that stocks for the long run is always the best investment strategy.
A second thought — and I just can't help myself on this — the Biden administration is now using Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” line to justify their continued nuclear deal negotiations with the outlaw state of Iran.
That sound you hear is my blood boiling. This is a pathetic argument by Mr. Biden.
First of all, Mr. Reagan’s basic take on the Soviet Union was very simple — we win, they lose. I haven’t heard Mr. Biden say that about Iran.
Also, Mr. Biden has never had the gumption to call Iran the “evil empire.” He hates MAGA more than he hates Iran.
Another point: Mr. Reagan wouldn’t even meet with Soviet leaders during his first term. Not only would he not negotiate with the communists, he wouldn’t talk to them. Period.
Instead, he spent his first term bolstering America’s defenses. Investing trillions of dollars into our national security, including the anti-ballistic missile system sometimes called “Star Wars” that is now the center of American defenses against nukes.
The other part of Mr. Reagan’s first term were tax cuts and deregulation to rejuvenate American economic growth, which then provided the resources to support our national defense.
When Mr. Reagan got around to meeting Mikhail Gorbachev in his second term, he told the Soviet leader that Star Wars was non-negotiable. And pointed out that the American economy was producing the goods to support our defense. And that the collapsing Soviet economy couldn’t support anything.
So, in a couple of years, we won and they lost.
Mr. Biden has turned a boom into a bust. His State Department keeps begging the Iranians for a deal. A deal, by the way, that is non-verifiable, and would include a couple hundred billion dollars of assistance to a bunch of people who are known internationally to lie, cheat, steal, terrorize, and kill anything and anybody supporting America.
In fact — not to put too fine of a point on it — it’s almost Mr. Biden saying: ‘we lose, they win.’ I just need to get that off my chest.
Larry Kudlow was the Director of the National Economic Council under President Trump from 2018-2021. His Fox Business show "Kudlow" airs at 4 p.m &. and his radio show airs on 770 ABC from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
From Larry Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.
