i'm a huge fan of hanlon's razor (never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity), there are times when it's simply not plausible for someone to be that stupid.

people are going to be cutting back on purchases and doing without for a while. yes, assuming they get back pay, they will buy some of the things they were putting on hold during the shutdown.

however, if they stopped doing things like going to restaurants for a while, they're not going to go to restaurants more often to make up for the weeks they missed during the shutdown. some of the economic damage is just never going to be recovered.

the situation is even worse if people start quitting and shifting jobs. then there's real economic damage to the economy.


even short shutdowns have already been documented to have done damage to gdp. this shutdown is already longer than any of those, with no end in sight, and is now likely to cause unique damage that shorter shutdowns avoided.


he knows all of this. sometimes, it's not stupidity. sometimes, it's malice.

even commenting on National Economic Policy. He has been cought on a number of occasions making a fool out of himself by his total lack of Economic Theories of cause and effect. Still remember Jim Kramer trying to fix Kudlow's verbal f--- ups.