Storm Clouds Gather as Dow Hits 10,000 (Kudlow)

NRO | October 15, 2009 | Larry Kudlow The falling dollar, rising taxes, and an explosion of spending and debt make it hard for me to be a long-term bull.


Dow Jones 10,000 arrived on Wall Street on Wednesday for the first time in a year. It’s a milestone of sorts, and it certainly represents a vote for investor confidence in economic recovery. Blowout profit reports from Intel and JPMorgan helped fuel the day’s 145-point gain. So did a retail sales report that, excluding Cash for Clunkers, was actually quite strong.
Profits are the mother’s milk of stocks, business, and the economy. And top-line sales revenues now appear to be bolstering the corporate cost-cutting effort. As long as these earnings keep coming in strong, stocks will keep rising. My hunch is that we’ll move back to pre-Lehman levels — to over 11,000 on the Dow and over 1,200 on the S&P. Backed by an easy-money Fed, the economy will probably grow in a mild V-shape of 3 to 4 percent for the next year or so.


But storm clouds are gathering.


One of the biggest clouds out there is the sinking dollar. What we’re witnessing is a big global shift out of dollars and into commodities. The dollar is quickly losing its reserve status to the yen and the euro. In the second quarter ending in June, central banks around the world invested 63 percent of their new cash reserves into euro and yen, and put only 37 percent into dollars. This week, the greenback notched a new 14-month low against the euro.

None of this is good. If this trend continues, spiking inflation and interest rates will choke off the stock market rally and do serious damage to the economy. It could happen very fast.

No one in the Obama administration or at the Fed seems to care about any of this. In fact, they are probably applauding the lower dollar as a sort of 1970s way of boosting exports and the manufacturing heartland in the Midwest. But the falling dollar is bad news for consumers. It ultimately will cause higher inflation, as signaled by the rising price of gold. Over the past six months, the greenback has lost 15 percent while gold has climbed nearly $150.

And the storm clouds don’t end there. Future tax hikes also are looming, as is an enormous explosion of government spending and debt. All of this is why it’s hard for me to be a long-term bull.

The great market boom that took place between 1982 and 2000 was basically characterized by low marginal tax rates and a strong King Dollar. Unfortunately, the 21st century has witnessed a weak dollar and, more recently, rising tax rates that are coming due in 2011 (if not sooner). In other words, the prosperity-inducing Mundell-Laffer supply-side model is being reversed.

As economist Art Laffer put it to me, we are stealing demand and production from the future. So, even as we get a V-shaped recovery now and into next year, 2011 may finally pay the piper for both low growth and higher inflation.

What we need to be doing is exercising some monetary restraint to save the dollar. The Fed should start moving excess cash from the economy. It should follow Australia’s lead and begin raising its target rate. In addition, the Treasury ought to be buying all these unwanted dollars in the marketplace. And Washington needs to quit its explosive spending and borrowing. It’s killing us. Some statutory — or even constitutional — limits should be set.

We also need new economic-growth incentives, such as lower marginal tax rates to benefit investors, entrepreneurs, and workers. We should be slashing tax rates on businesses large and small.

Stocks could have another four to six months left to rally. That would be great news for increasing the wealth of the investor class, and maybe even enhancing the animal spirits a bit. But the policy mix is all wrong right now. Health-care entitlements and taxes punctuate the wrong-way policy mix.

What remains to be seen is whether the Republicans can successfully challenge the Democrats with a true supply-side economic-growth message and job-creating platform. If not, beware of the storm clouds.


— Larry Kudlow, NRO’s Economics Editor, is host of CNBC’s The Kudlow Report and author of the daily web blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$.