National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said the American economy is still beating the rest of its global rivals despite stock-market volatility.
“We are the hottest economy in the world right now. We’re crushing it,” Kudlow told CNBC. “Europe is slowing down. Asia is slowing down. We are moving rapidly,” the veteran financial guru and former Ronald Reagan adviser said.
“Right now, the U.S. is carrying the ball. I don’t see an end to it,” said Kudlow, who worked as Reagan’s budget deputy between 1981 and 1985.
“You can have the short-term oscillations in certain business indicators, but look at the big picture. The big picture is we are growing faster than almost anybody dreamed possible, I think it's the biggest story of 2018, I really do. We are in a economic boom most folks thought was impossible,” he said.
Kudlow contends that the economic strength is built upon very real, solid fundamentals.
“With all due respect, I don’t think this is anything resembling a sugar high. President Trump has changed the incentives in the economy. The war on business is over,” said Kudlow, who served as the Trump campaign's senior economic adviser.
Kudlow isn’t concerned with the market selloff, which he called “a normal correction in a bull market” because most of the recent economic reports have been “spectacular.”
“Paychecks are getting fatter blue-collar workers are going back to work I'm saying this because the economy is very, very sound and although I'm not here to predict the stock market,” said Kudlow.
“The reality is, if you have a strong economy that will provide confidence for stocks, but corrections come and go,” he said.
Wall Street indexes continued their slide in Thursday’s volatile session as investors worried about rising interest rates and braced for a trade war hit to corporate earnings a day ahead of the quarterly reporting season kickoff, Reuters reported.
Investors worried that equity markets would have trouble recovering as rising interest rates coincide with uncertainty about how much earnings growth would be hurt by a U.S. trade war with China.
After hitting an intraday high of 28.84, the CBOE Volatility Index, popularly known as the “fear gauge,” ended the day up 2 points at 24.98, its highest close since Feb. 12.
Obviously, not everyone is as optimistic as Kudlow.
“We are going a fairly significant pull-back in the final quarter (of 2018),” said Bernard Baumohl, managing director and chief global economist of the Economic Outlook Group, Princeton, New Jersey.
“We saw this, the market couldn’t conceivably continue to rise, it couldn’t conceivably maintain its strength in the face of rising short- and long-term interest rates,” he told Reuters.
“Ironically this is also occurring at a time when the economic expansion was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. The U.S. economy is beginning to lose some steam. We saw it in consumer spending, we’ve seen it in home sales, and in auto purchases.”
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