For many years Kudlow served as chief economist for a number of Wall Street firms. Kudlow was a member of the Bush-Cheney Transition Advisory Committee. During President Reagan’s first term, Kudlow was the associate director for economics and planning, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, where he was engaged in the development of the administration’s economic and budget policy. He is a trusted advisor to many of our nation’s top decision-makers in Washington and has testified as an expert witness on economic matters before several congressional committees.
Kudlow began his career as a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, working in the areas of domestic open market operations and bank supervision. Kudlow was educated at the University of Rochester and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He and his wife Judy live in New York City and Redding, Connecticut. (from the CNBC website)
Karl Marx once asserted, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”
Even a relatively cursory study of Western socioeconomic history and current events provides abundant evidence to substantiate Marx’s observation. Forged in a crucible of formidable indoctrination underscored by materialistic bribes enabled by usurious lending, seductive propaganda in the form of media and advertising, and illusory “get rich” opportunities, American Capitalism maintains an iron grip on the psyches of hundreds of millions of people—not only at home but around the globe.
Blindly worshipping profits, money, and material “success”, we US Americans have plunged the United States into a moral abyss from which it is unlikely we will re-emerge. If we don’t implode due to our own decadence, the rest of the world will see to the demise of our bloody, exploitative, and barbaric empire.
Wrestle free for at least a moment, if you can, from the catechism of free markets, deregulation, free trade, and the like. Now consider just a few characteristics of American Capitalism which guarantee that we, as its practitioners, will continue sinking deeper and deeper into the fetid cesspool of depravity and isolation that rules our everyday lives, even if we (at least many of us) remain largely oblivious to its daily exactions. Our system, which we have been inculcated to view through Panglossian lenses, rewards greed, selfishness, self-absorption, and hyper-individualism (four of the most repulsive aspects of human nature); necessitates that profits trump humanity, and demands perpetually futile efforts to fulfill an insatiable appetite for growth and expansion. If we in the United States had the courage to gaze upon our collective reflection in the mirror, we would shudder at the sight of a visage more grotesque than that of Dorian Gray.
Few in today’s corporate-dominated mass media in the United States better embody our “ruling intellectual force” than Lawrence Kudlow. As his CNBC bio sketch indicates, he is no mere sycophant to the criminal class of plutocrats who rule our nation. His resume’ includes a Princeton education, an influential position within the Reagan administration, a stint as a high-powered player on Wall Street, and (currently) a position as the principal of an investment research firm. No mere journalist is he. Lawrence is both a member of the ruling class and its staunch advocate in the “liberal media.”
Calling him a swine would insult our porcine brethren, so let’s not label him. Instead, let’s define him by his numerous betrayals of the human race. As we shall learn, these betrayals gush from his pen (and mouth) to form a relentlessly potent stream of perverse justifications for institutionalized theft, rape and murder.
Let’s consider and dissect some examples of Mr. Kudlow’s punditry:
Kudlow’s “Design for Doom” appeared in the Washington Times on 5/13/07:
“And while Republicans talk about significantly increasing the defense budget and expanding American force levels for all the armed services, the Democrats hope for some sort of Iraqi peace dividend upon immediate withdrawal — one that can be rechanneled into higher domestic social spending….. To a person, each Democratic presidential candidate also wants to raise taxes on the rich and roll back President Bush’s tax cuts. The Republicans, however, understand those tax cuts have propelled economic growth and contributed to a stock market boom. They recognize Mr. Bush’s Goldilocks bull-market economy — which I call the greatest story never told — relies on extending the investor tax cuts and perhaps even moving forward with a flat tax or national sales tax…. Finally, to a person, each Democratic presidential candidate also has it in for corporate America. The Democrats discuss various punishments for business — especially oil companies, but also drug, utility and insurance firms. Not so for the Republicans, who talk about helping businesses and promoting entrepreneurship in our successful free-enterprise economy.”Slow down there, Larry! You are emptying your arsenal of American Capitalist memes in just a few paragraphs.
Kudlow knows that if he and his fellow aristocrats are to maintain the shekels to afford $3,000 suits, cars costing six figures, Rolexes, trophy wives and mistresses, global jet-setting, and homes with the square footage of the Taj Mahal, us “commoners” have to believe in the illusion of democracy, and hence that there is a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats. Yet given the fact that both parties are beholden to obscenely wealthy corporations and individuals, and that many of our “elected” officials are well-heeled insiders like Mr. Kudlow, even Mr. Roarke and Tattoo couldn’t make this fantasy real.
And by all means, let’s increase a “defense” budget that already exceeds more than the rest of the world combined (to “defend” 5% of the world’s population). Assuming the Democrats did throw a few additional crumbs to the homeless, poor and working class via the “higher domestic social spending” Larry decries, public spending for infrastructure, education, housing, transportation, and health care would remain grossly inadequate for a nation with the wealth and power of the United States.
Presenting a particularly glaring pair of contradictions, Kudlow laments that the Democrats have “it in for corporate America.” Would Larry have us believe that the Democrats are truly dense enough to bite the hand that feeds them?
Further miring himself in inconsistencies, he raves about the success of our “free-enterprise economy.” With sharply decreased regulation and the increasingly incestuous relationship between the US government and “corporate America,” leviathan companies like Microsoft, Halliburton, and Wal-Mart are attaining frightening power and dominating the so-called “free market.” Free enterprise has indeed been wildly successful for a relative handful of major investors, like Kudlow.
In May of 2006, Larry penned “Would Adam Smith Approve?” This excerpt comes from Human Events.com, which claims to have been “leading the conservative movement since 1944”:
“A couple hundred years ago, in his “Theory of the Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith contended that capitalism requires a moral and ethical center if it is to function effectively and to the benefit of all.About 30 years ago, supply-side economic philosopher Irving Kristol similarly emphasized the importance of capitalism’s moral compass. His wife, the brilliant historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, wrote regularly about the importance of morality in society, culture and the economy, a topic she covered in her standout book, “The De-Moralization of Society.” She sets off the Victorians in English history as an example of a moral society……
Capitalism in this country has been under assault ever since FDR’s New Deal 1930s, a time when a number of alphabet agencies attempted to control America’s industrial and farming sectors. The experiment soon proved a dismal failure, with unemployment running 20 percent to 25 percent up until World War II. It was only when Roosevelt started unleashing businesses to produce wartime goods that the economy ultimately resurrected.
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