Bob Brinker's guest today was Peter Navarro. Peter Navarro is a business professor at the University of California, Irvine. His latest book is "The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage." For a list of all his books, see "More about Peter Navarro
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Permabear wrote a short summary of this interview and posted it in our "Bob Brinker" discussion forum at "Investing for the long term" on facebook. I've reposted some of it here:
."Permabear wrote a short summary of this interview and posted it in our "Bob Brinker" discussion forum at "Investing for the long term" on facebook. I've reposted some of it here:
Peter Navarro was Brinker's guest in the third hour of Saturday's show. I am very familiar with Navarro's thinking from his contributions on bearish web sites I read as well as his regular participation on Larry Kudlow's show, which I watch religiously. Peter Navarro is a little more conservative than my tastes politically and economically, but I think his central message is very very important and no one seems to be listening. The name of his book is "The Coming China Wars". His main point, expressed well on the Brinker show, was that China is really taking advantage of the U.S., using currency manipulation and unfair trading practices, to pretty much steal America's manufacturing base away and contribute to great imbalances in the world economy. He argues that besides blatant currency manipulation, China also encourages stealing intellectual property (think Google and all the piracy of software), protects their own markets, and subsidizes their exports, basically contributing to a mercantilist economy, with America ultimately being the victim. His point is that China is surreptitiously engaged in economic warfare against the U.S. and the U.S. isn't even fighting back. We are just playing along as our manufacturing base disappears, as we go into trade debt, and as both Bernanke and our politicians encourage this trade debt by facilitating the funding of spiraling budget deficits. Navarro argues that if China floated their currency and abided by fair trading practices, that the U.S. could compete with China and take back much of our manufacturing, and thus our future. I really feel that Peter Navarro is right on these issues. China has been playing us for about 15 years, and combined with our energy imports, we are just exporting our wealth away, running up massive debts, and creating huge imbalances in the world economy which will have a very bad ending for everyone.
I sensed that Bob Brinker disagreed with much of what Navarro was preaching, but I think by the end, Navarro had made a strong case, which Brinker had to have at least taken account of. Along with an interview with doom and gloomer Ravi Batra about two years ago, I don't think I've ever sensed such irritation in Brinker's voice when interviewing a guest. But Navarro had it exactly right and Brinker was naive on these issues IMHO.
On this weekend’s Moneytalk programs, Bob Brinker again assailed the credibility of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) regarding HR 1207 – the audit the Federal Reserve System bill. Bob consistently misrepresents Ron Paul’s position and claims that Paul as a doctor, probably doesn’t know anything about economics. Quite frankly, this is where Bob is being disingenuous at best and dishonest at least. HR 1207 has attracted 310 co-sponsors – every Republican (177) and over 100 Democrats have signed onto the bill. Now, given the fact that over ¾’s of the congress has signed onto the bill, wouldn’t it behoove Brinker to do a little research on Ron Paul? If Brinker were to Google the phrase “Ron Paul on Economics” – He would get pages of results and plenty of examples of Dr. Paul’s deep knowledge of economics along with published archives (all available free on the ‘net) where Ron Paul discusses economics from the perspective of the Austrian school of thought (Von Mises, Hayek, Menger, etc). In fact, there’s even a YouTube video on the first page of search results where Ron Paul appears on Morning Joe (MSNBC) and is lauded by the host for prophetically forecasting the housing market meltdown five years (2003) before it occurred in 2008. Paul explains that if one believes in commodity-based money, free markets, no central bank and non-interventionist foreign policy, then it is not too difficult to see where the prevailing Keynesian philosophies at work in Washington are leading us. That is the key thought. Paul eloquently deconstructs Keynesian economic theory and in Bob Brinker’s world that is an unpardonable sin. Bob is an unapologetic promoter of Keynes and cannot stand to hear the crackpot economist and pedophile’s philosophies criticized. Rather than heap ad hominem attacks on Ron Paul (weekly) Brinker could easily invite Dr. Paul on his program and air out his differences with the congressman, but I think Bob shys away from doing that because he realizes that Ron Paul will show how inept Brinker’s understanding of economics are. I’ll close with yet another example of what an intellectually dishonest broker of information BB is. Early in 2009, Austrian economist and Mises scholar Thomas E. Woods authored a book on the current economic mess called “Meltdown”. The book rose as high as #7 on the NYT best- sellers list. Did Brinker invite Woods on Moneytalk to discuss his work? No. But Bob has invited plenty of authors in the last year, none of whose books have made it as high as Tom Woods’ to be guests on Moneytalk. In fact, Brinker specifically avoids any mention of Woods’ book and will cut off or shout down any caller who attempts to make reference to the book.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing more repugnant than a dishonest person and Brinker is completely repulsive in this respect.