| Lawrence Kudlow | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lawrence Kudlow August 20, 1947 New Jersey |
| Education | University of Rochester Princeton University |
| Occupation | News Anchor and Economic Commentator |
| Spouse(s) | Judith Pond-Kudlow |
| Religious belief(s) | Roman Catholic, formerly Jewish |
| Notable credit(s) | The Kudlow Report Kudlow & Company Kudlow & Cramer |
| Official website | |
Lawrence "Larry" Kudlow (born August 20, 1947) is an American economist, television personality, and newspaper columnist. He is the host of CNBC's The Kudlow Report. As a syndicated columnist, his articles appear in numerous U.S. newspapers and web sites, including his own blog, Kudlow's Money Politic$.
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Kudlow was born into a Jewish family and grew up in New Jersey. Kudlow attended the private Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey, from the second half of middle school to high school.[1]
Kudlow graduated from University of Rochester in Rochester, New York with a degree in history in 1969.[2] Known as "Kuddles" to friends, he was a star on the tennis team and a member of the left-wing SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) at Rochester. In 1970, Kudlow joined Joseph Duffey's "New Politics" senatorial campaign in Connecticut. Duffey was a leading anti-war politician during the Vietnam war era. Kudlow, working with Yale student Bill Clinton as well as many other rising young Democrats, was known as a "brilliant" district coordinator. In 1971, Kudlow attended Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he studied politics and economics.
Kudlow began his career as a Staff Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He worked in a division of that bank that handled open market operations, which involve buying and selling bonds to help control inflation and interest rates. In 1970, when he was still a Democrat he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of Joseph Duffey along with Bill Clinton, John Podesta, and Michael Medved, another future conservative, and in 1976 he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan along with Tim Russert against Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley, brother of William F. Buckley, Jr.[3]
During the first term of the Reagan administration (1981–1985), Kudlow served as Associate Director for Economics and Planning in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which belongs to the Executive Office of the President. While he worked at the OMB, Kudlow was also an Advisory Committee member of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, more commonly known as Freddie Mac. In April 2005, New York governor George Pataki included Kudlow in a six-member state tax commission.
In February 2009, rumors surfaced that Kudlow was considering a run for U.S. Senate in the 2010 Connecticut Senate election against Christopher Dodd.[4] However, on March 24, 2009, he announced on his program that he was not running for the Senate.[5]
In January 2010, after the upset win of Scott Brown for the US Senate seat from Massachusetts, a movement began in Buffalo, NY to draft Kudlow for the US Senate seat currently held by Charles Schumer.[6] On January 29, 2010, Kudlow said that he was considering entering the race, saying, "I do believe that retiring Sen. Schumer would be a noble cause."[7] Kudlow never made any mention of the race again, allowing Gary Berntsen and Jay Townsend to pursue the seat instead.
In 1987 Kudlow was rehired by Bear Stearns as their chief economist and senior managing director. He was fired in 1994 after his cocaine use resulted in him missing an important client presentation.[8] He also served as an economic counsel to A.B. Laffer & Associates, which is the San Diego, California, company of Arthur Laffer, a major supply-side economist and creator of the Laffer curve, an economic theory tying lower taxation levels to increased government revenues, at least at some taxation rates.
He was a member of the board of directors of Empower America, a supply-side economics organization founded in 1993 and merged in 2004 with the Citizens for a Sound Economy to form FreedomWorks. Kudlow is also consulting chief economist for American Skandia Life Assurance, Inc., in Connecticut, a subsidiary of insurance giant Prudential Financial.
Kudlow's book American Abundance: The New Economic and Moral Prosperity (ISBN 0-8281-1117-0) was published by HarperCollins on December 1, 1997.
Kudlow became Economics Editor at National Review Online (NRO) in May 2001.
Kudlow served as one of a rotating set of hosts on the CNBC show America Now, which began airing in November 2001. In May 2002, that show was renamed Kudlow & Cramer, and Kudlow and Jim Cramer became the permanent hosts. In January 2005, Cramer left to host his own show, Mad Money, and the program's name was changed the next month to Kudlow & Company. The program went on hiatus in October 2008, and returned in January 2009 as The Kudlow Report. Kudlow added co-anchor of CNBC's The Call to his responsibilities in late 2008. Kudlow's style is direct and his line of argument is always based on optimism about the economy, the stock market, and the dollar.
Kudlow is also a regular guest on Squawk Box. He has contributed to CNBC.com on MSN. He also appears on The John Batchelor Show as a co-host on Tuesdays and as a substitute. In March 2006, Kudlow started to host a talk radio show on politics and economics on WABC (AM) as "The Larry Kudlow Show" aired on Saturday mornings from 10am to 1pm ET and via nationwide syndication starting 5 June 2010. He started a blog named Kudlow's Money Politic$ in October 2004.
He has also contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Cato Journal of the Cato Institute, and the City Journal of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as well as the television shows The McLaughlin Group, and has appeared as a guest on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and on Wall Street Week.
Kudlow opposes estate taxes, as well as taxes on dividends and capital gains. He also advocates that employees be compelled to make greater contributions to their pension and medical costs, suggesting that these expenses are an undue burden on businesses and defends high executive compensation as a manifestation of market forces and opposes most forms of government regulation. In general, he describes himself as a supply-side economist, arguing that reducing tax rates will encourage economic growth and ultimately increase tax revenue. He has often argued that economic growth will clear deficits, while acknowledging the limits of growth. He has also advocated wide ownership of stocks and frequently speaks of a broad "investor class" that includes most Americans. He is a harsh critic of corporate corruption such as that at Enron and Worldcom.[9]
During interviews on his CNBC show, Kudlow has taken to using "the Bernank" as a phrase facetiously naming Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke. The moniker was coined in a cartoon clip first appearing on YouTube in November 2010 that satirized quantitative easing. His continued use of "the Bernank" indicates Kudlow's endorsement of the cartoon along with his opinion, in the negative, of the Fed's recent monetary policy.
On June 26, 2002, in a commentary in NRO titled "Taking Back the Market — By Force",[10] Kudlow called for the US to attack Iraq because "a lack of decisive follow-through in the global war on terrorism is the single biggest problem facing the stock market and the nation today." Kudlow was one of 250 economic experts to sign an open letter dated February 12, 2003 endorsing George W. Bush's policies on economic growth and jobs.[11]
Kudlow firmly denied that U.S. would enter a recession (in 2007) or that the U.S. was in recession (in early and mid 2008). In December, 2007 he wrote: "The recession debate is over. It's not gonna happen. Time to move on. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that's a minimum). The Bush boom is alive and well. It's finishing up its sixth splendid year with many more years to come".[12] In May, 2008 he wrote:"President George W. Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country" in his "R" is for "Right".[13] He said that "I don't believe we're heading into a recession" in regards to the large Wall Street drop of August 4, 2011 and recent GDP weakness.[14]
Kudlow is a Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.[15] He is also a member of the Catholic Advisory Board of the Ave Maria Mutual Funds.[16] Kudlow belongs to the Union League Club of New York, the Princeton Club, the Capitol Hill Club and co-founded the Club for Growth. He also serves as a member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees. Kudlow is on the advisory committee of the Kemp Institute at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.[17]
Kudlow converted to Catholicism and entered a twelve-step program to deal with his addictions to cocaine and alcohol in the mid-1990s. Kudlow was persuaded to convert to Catholicism by Father C. John McCloskey III.[18]
Kudlow has been married three times, most recently in 1986 to Judith Pond. Kudlow lives in Redding in Fairfield County in southwestern Connecticut. His hobbies include tennis and golf. He had hip replacement surgery in mid July 2005.