http://www.salon.com/news/us_economy/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2010/02/08/draft_kudlow It's not just that the prospect of an inveterate anti-tax, pro-supply-side ideologue with high name recognition running for the Senate in the media capital of the world would be the equivalent of a massive jobs stimulus plan targeted directly at the beleaguered news business. There's also the fun to be had detailing how one man could so consistently be so wrong when discussing his supposed specialty: the economy. Our story begins in the summer of 2005, when Kudlow offered his thoughts in National Review on the sustainability of the housing boom in "The Housing Bears Are Wrong Again." The opening paragraph will live in infamy: Homebuilders led the stock parade this week with a fantastic 11 percent gain. This is a group that hedge funds and bubbleheads love to hate. All the bond bears have been dead wrong in predicting sky-high mortgage rates . So have all the bubbleheads who expect housing-price crashes in Las Vegas or Naples, Florida, to bring down the consumer, the rest of the economy, and the entire stock market. Continue Reading For those whose memories are short, let us review: The end of the boom and the collapse of the housing market did bring down the consumer, the economy, and the stock market, and would have sent most of the nation's biggest financial institutions into bankruptcy were it not for massive government intervention. Kudlow's reason for optimism: Since the early 1970s, demand for homes had "far outstripped the supply of newly built residences." But as the (almost never wrong) blogger Calculated Risk pointed out three years later, Kudlow even managed to get that part cockeyed. From 1970-2005 "There were significantly more housing units built (57 million starts)... than new households formed (44.6 million)..." Fast forward a year and a half, to December 2007, by which point the question of whether the housing boom was sustainable had been thoroughly settled. Now the question was: Whither the greater economy? Blogging at National Review's the Corner, Kudlow was definitive: There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead -- quarter after quarter, year after year -- defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth. In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.... There's no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It's not going to happen ... Yes, it's still the greatest story never told.
"On December 14, 2008 the New York Times published an article on Schumer's role in the Wall Street meltdown. The article stated that Schumer "embraced the industryâs free-market, deregulatory agenda more than any other Democrat in Congress, even backing measures now blamed for contributing to the financial crisis... Schumer took steps to protect industry players from government oversight and tougher rules, a review of his record shows. Over the years, he has also helped save financial institutions billions of dollars in higher taxes or fees. He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies." This article also charged that Schumer blocked ratings agencies reforms proposed by the Bush Administration and the Cox SEC."