Kudlow & Company

"CNBC Reports" host Larry Kudlow believes free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. Too bad CNN "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host Lou Dobbs doesn't.

Dobbs attacked Kudlow during the Jan. 14 broadcast of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" for commenting on a dinner meeting of conservative pundits at the home of Washington Post columnist George Will on Jan. 13. Kudlow was not included in person or by phone to respond to Dobbs' criticism.

"This is Larry Kudlow - one of the folks invited to a conservative fest with the president-elect last night," Dobbs said. "I'd like to just share, everybody - what a Larry Kudlow-conservative person does after meeting with the president-elect."

Dobbs cited a few lines from Kudlow's appearance on CNBC's Jan. 14 "The Call" - "He is charming, he is terribly smart, bright, well informed. He has a great sense of humor." Then Dobbs skipped moments in Kudlow's exchange with "The Call" co-host Melissa Francis and added - "He's so well informed and he loves to deal with both sides of an issue."

Feeling a little bailout fatigue? Tired of the assault on the taxpayer from the federal government to pacify those influenced by the United Auto Workers? CNBC's Larry Kudlow feels your pain.

Call this red meat for the troubled anti-bailout soul. Kudlow, now performing a role as a co-host on CNBC's mid-morning program "The Call," blasted the Union Auto Worker, President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and anyone else associated with $17.4 billion in loans for auto companies announced earlier today on Dec. 19.

"This is a full-up pooper scooper for the American taxpayer, which now owns General Motors," Kudlow said. "We're going to have a GM cabinet. Barack Obama is going to be the new car czar because Bush basically pushed this pooper scooper his way."

On The Situation Room today, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer made a surprising admission to, of all people, real estate entrepreneur Donald Trump:

BLITZER: What do you think of his (Obama's) decision to pick Joe Biden as his running mate?

TRUMP: I really don't know Senator Biden but I know one thing. He's run a number of times for president. He's gotten less than 1 percent of the vote each time. And that's a pretty tough thing. You know, he's also been involved in pretty big controversy like plagiarism in college and various other things. That's a pretty big statement. So perhaps you change over a period of time. But when you plagiarize, that's a very bad statement. That hasn't been brought up yet, but I'm sure at some point it will. I'm sure that Sarah Palin will bring it up in a debate or somebody's going to bring it up.

BLITZER: Are you talking about plagiarism when he was running for president?

TRUMP: No, I'm talking about when he was a college student as I understand it, and this was a big issue originally but he supposedly plagiarized as a college student. That's a pretty serious charge.

BLITZER: I don't remember that. We'll check it out. But maybe you obviously have a better memory about that.

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.

Sex sells, even during a presidential election. But that doesn't mean journalists have to be happy about it.

CNBC's "Squawk Box" co-host Joe Kernen took a moment during a panel discussion September 2 to take a shot at the onslaught of coverage over presumptive vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy.

You know as a member of the media I'm just kind of embarrassed with the media. The media says, "Yeah it shouldn't matter, it's not going to matter, we're not going to cover it" and then they put it on the cover of every paper.

Earlier in the broadcast Kernen told chief Washington correspondent John Harwood he did not think the family incidence was as big a deal as the media was making it out to be:

Felt a little bit like the guy in Casablanca, shocked, you know: teen sex in Alaska, John. Probably not that much of a shocker I guess, right? Not a whole lot. I guess bowling, yeah, It's a little lonely probably up there, right, John? ... I don't understand everybody at the same time saying that this is not going to be a big deal ... the press is going to be responsible about this, Barack Obama please don't make anything of this, but then it's the cover of every paper like it, you know, like matters.

While a lot of the members of the mainstream media were scratching their heads, trying to figure out just who Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was, CNBC actually came through with an almost immediate positive response.

The August 29 broadcast of CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" featured two of the network's prominent personalities analyzing Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's choice of a running mate. "Closing Bell" host Maria Bartiromo and "Kudlow & Company" host Larry Kudlow said McCain's decision was wise.

Bartiromo, who was set to feature Palin in an upcoming CNBC special on energy, called the governor a "terrific choice."

BARTIROMO: "I can tell you a lot about Gov. Palin just from my conversation with her and from the day that we spent with her and that is she challenged the establishment in Alaska. She is very, very popular in Alaska and what she brings to the table predominantly is her knowledge and her know-how of energy. That's the bottom line."

The dilemma of high gas prices might be addressed if congressional leaders would all just get along.

From CNN correspondent Kate Bolduan's perspective, the political differences on energy policy are little more than a "partisan standoff" between Democrats and Republicans.

"Even before the votes were counted on the latest energy proposal, the partisan standoff was clear," Bolduan said on the July 25 "American Morning." "[T]hat bill, a Democratic plan to release oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It failed - one more example of the deadlock over sky-high gas prices and one step closer to Congress going home for the summer without passing anything significant on energy."

According to the report, the primary conflict involved opening federal lands to offshore drilling.

As of late, the networks just can't get enough of bad housing news, seizing each opportunity to make a point how bad the American economy is.

Each of the network news broadcasts on May 27 - ABC, CBS and NBC - took the news that home prices fell 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008, despite the news that new home sales rose an unexpected 3.3 percent in April from March, to portray the economy in a very grim light.

"The downward slide for home prices is only picking up speed," CBS correspondent Anthony Mason said on the May 27 "Evening News." "The 14 percent plunge nationally was led by Las Vegas, where prices have fallen more than 25 percent over the past year. Miami is down more than 24 percent, Phoenix - 23 percent. Among the 20 major cities surveyed, only Charlotte showed a meager gain and analysts can't see a bottom yet."

If you're a believer in the Larry Kudlow creed, that "free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," then look out, because George Soros is going to make you cringe.

A May 13 USA Today article by David J. Lynch profiled the Hungarian billionaire who said he sees traditional free market theory as "flawed."

"Of course, real life never matches up exactly with the theory's assumptions. But they represent, economists say, a useful way of making sense of a complex world," Lynch wrote.

"To Soros, the conventional approach is rubbish. Instead of a world of near-identical actors, coolly assessing their economic interests and acting with clear-eyed precision, he sees a world (and markets) governed by passion, bias and self-reinforcing errors," Lynch wrote. "Because fallible human beings are both involved in, and trying to make sense of, this world, they inevitably make mistakes. Those mistakes then feed on themselves in ‘reflexive' ways that, when taken to extremes, result in situations such as the now-deflating U.S. housing bubble."

The network news broadcasts are to blame for the American people's widely held misconception that the U.S. economy is in a recession, according to Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell III.

"How in the world is it that 81 percent of the American people believe that we're in a recession?" Bozell asked on CNBC's "Kudlow and Company" May 2. "Maybe it's because the national networks this year, and we've counted it, have talked about a recession over 500 times."

You've probably heard about the French trader who has managed to stash away $7 billion before going on the lam. What's the big deal with sticking it to some French bank for $7 billion?

This $7-billion loss by the French bank Societe Generale (SocGen) (EPA:GLE) might have caused the sharp plunge in some European stock markets on January 21 - which spurred the Federal Reserve to make an unprecedented emergency 75-basis-point rate cut on January 22.

One economist drew a correlation between the SocGen scandal and the Fed's decision to make the emergency rate cut.

Got some hot stock plays for 2008? CNBC's David Faber thinks you should factor in the recession that hasn't yet happened when you adjust your portfolio for this New Year.

CNBC "Squawk Box" contributor Faber warned investors on the January 7 "Squawk on the Street" that stocks reliant on business spending could hurt since a recession, he said, is imminent.

"Business spending, concerns about business spending overall. I think Anne Mulcahy [CEO] at Xerox (NYSE:XRX) may have said something about business spending," Faber said. "I'm hearing business spending slowing. That's the concern - what happens to the stock market in a recession because we're heading into one it looks like."

It wasn't good news by any means, but it also wasn't the end of the world.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported January 4 the unemployment rate rose to 5 percent in December, but if you're paying attention to the media coverage, you would think it's time to whip up some shoe leather stew and play "Brother Can You Spare a Dime."

A January 4 Associated Press story by Jeannine Aversa pointed to the job data as one of the "problems in the economy" that has "elevated fears about a recession." But even with all these "problems" - housing woes, the credit crunch, high oil prices, weak job numbers - the criteria of the economy being in a recession still haven't been close to being met.

CBS Correspondent Anthony Mason would probably call it the not-so-almighty dollar, and he’d be correct if U.S. economic health was viewed only through the narrow lens of currency exchanges.

“[T]he weak dollar is really wreaking havoc on investor confidence and in many ways, the impact is just beginning to be felt,” Mason said on CBS’s November 12 “The Early Show.” “The dollar, once the gold standard of currencies, is falling hard and fast around the world. At $1.46, the euro is up nearly 12 percent against the greenback. The yen traded at 110.38 per dollar, an 18-month high. And for the first time since 1976, the Canadian dollar has risen over 20 percent in value against the U.S. dollar at $1.06.” (Click here to see video.)

But while the dollar is lagging, some experts think the dollar is undervalued.

Story after story about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase offer for Dow Jones & Company, which owns The Wall Street Journal, has criticized the prospect as a threat to journalism, questioned the media mogul’s “editorial integrity” and attacked his character.

Journalists, media critics and the union representing the Journal were up in arms.

“[P]robably not quite as frightening as the day we learned Kim Jong Il has the bomb, but close … very close. It could be worse. We might have discovered, for example, that Saddam Hussein had stashed all those missing weapons of mass destruction in a Pasadena storage locker rented to Osama bin Laden,” said a Los Angeles Times column.

On April 25, 2007 the Dow soared to another record close, this time above 13,000. As Newsbusters reported here, here and here, the networks did anything but cheer. In fact, network broadcast reporting of the Dow's recovery since 2003 has been marked by pessimism.

Katie Couric introduced the April 25, 2007 CBS "Evening News" report with this dismal statement:

"Even as investors are making money in the market, Anthony Mason reports there are concerns tonight about the rest of the U.S. economy."

Mason made good on Couric's tease, with a class warfare remark that "Wall Street and Main Street appear to be headed in different directions" because of housing and gas prices.

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center, appeared Monday on CNBC's "Kudlow and Company" where he discussed how the media are misreporting the economy.

The segment, in which Bozell appeared with Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was prompted by a new Special Report study from the MRC's Business & Media Institute, "Bad News Bears: How Networks Distort a Good Economy and Batter President Bush."

Video clip (4:58): Windows Media (9.8 MB at higher-quality 256 kbps) or Real (3.8 MB at lower-quality 100 kbps) , plus MP3 audio (1.7 MB)

If there is such a thing as a “good liberal,” Peter Beinart of The New Republic is certainly one. Whether or not you agree with his point of view, at least Beinart’s columns are well-reasoned and intelligently presented as opposed to much of the shrill non sequiturs plastered across the opinion pages of most MSM.

With that in mind, Beinart entered the ring Friday night against Ann Coulter, on CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company.” Beinart clearly looked like an able opponent right from the start:

Well, look, if the Democrats take control, you're going to see a lot more aggressive oversight from both houses, and I think as you have said, look, as a nonpartisan matter, we have checks and balances in this country. Our government works when the Congress is aggressively checking the executive branch and vice-versa, and that really hasn't been happening very much as the Republican Congress, particularly in the House, has acted as an arm of the White House rather than an independent branch, and I think it has hurt the congressional Republicans themselves. The ones who looked the best, people like Lindsey Graham, are those who have exercised some independence, and I would gather that if Republicans in Congress had exercised a little more oversight and a little more independence, not only would we be in better shape as a country but they would be in better shape as a party running for re-election this year.

Coulter responded with a few jabs of her own: