Larry Kudlow Celebrates Booming Economy In Parts Of America Without COVID

Can you spot the slippage?

Larry Kudlow's streak is unbroken. The director of the White House Economic Council has been wrong about literally everything since he predicted the housing bubble would go on forever in 2005. So, yesterday he went on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper to be wrong some more.

Were you under the impression that a double-digit unemployment rate was a sign of a deeply unhealthy economy? Au contraire, mon frère ! According to Trump's nutbag economics advisor — who is not an economist — things are just hunky dory.

"I don't think the economy is going south. I think it's going north," he enthused.

Now, I will acknowledge that in some of these spiking hot spots, yes, absolutely, you're going to see a moderation of this recovery, no question. On the other hand, Jake, apart from Texas, Arizona, and Florida and California, where, by the way, Deborah Birx says there's some signs of stabilization the whole Northeast is over. Most of the West is -- I mean, the whole Northeast is open, and most of the Midwest, Jake.

UH HUH.

Aside from like 30 percent of the country, everything is fine! Life is good.

Dr. Birx just warned of incipient COVID crises in Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Jose, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Baltimore, most of which are in the Midwest; school districts across the country are grappling with how and whether to open; and we're back up to 1,000 deaths every day. But other than that, life is back to normal.

Except that literally nothing is back to normal, no one knows what will happen in the fall, new unemployment numbers ticked up last week — the seventeenth week in a row that new claims exceeded one million — and Mitch McConnell seems like he's in no hurry to get another stimulus package out there to help businesses get over the hump.

Nevertheless, Kudlow predicts astronomical growth for the rest of the year.

"And I still think, Jake, there is going to be 20 percent growth rate in the third and fourth quarters."

Can we talk for a second about how BATSHIT CRAZY that is? Here's a handy graph of quarterly growth rates, courtesy of the government's Bureau of Economic Advisors.

There is no quarter in the past four years of a relatively healthy economy with basically full employment in which the growth rate hit four percent, and yet Trump's happytalk econ loon wants us to believe that we're about to hit 20 percent in the third and fourth quarters of this year? During a raging pandemic? REALLY?

Is Larry Kudlow aware that the third quarter is already one-third over, and it's not looking that good?

Here, have a little analysis from an IRL labor economist who used to work for Treasury in the beforetimes. While Kudlow is chirping that "the odds favor a big increase in job creation and a big reduction in unemployment" when the July jobs numbers come out in a week, no one else is projecting that kind of confidence.

Employment in the @uscensusbureau Household Pulse Survey fell by -4.1 million last week alone. That's a cumulative… https: //t.co/LRSukW94bH

— Ernie Tedeschi (@Ernie Tedeschi) 1595427146.0 

In summary and in conclusion, the virus is still raging, and the GOP has no plan other than cutting unemployment checks and shielding businesses from liability, forcing workers to choose between starvation and risking infection. But don't worry, because crazy Uncle Larry says it's all going wonderfully.

"That's why I'm optimistic on the economy. So far — I could be wrong, Jake, lord knows — but, so far, so far, this is, the iteration here, the dynamic here is very positive."

Lord knows.

[ CNN Transcript ]

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