Sometimes in church you'll hear a preacher preach on a
passage. Romans chapter 8 is a good passage. "Therefore, there
is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus..." It's a
beautiful passage. Sometimes a preacher will preach on a subject like
wealth or something. When they do it this way, you can take a verse out
of context and/or twist it, and you can make it seem like the Bible supports
almost anything you want to say. It's not a new approach. Peter
spoke of it: "[Paul's] letters contain some things that are hard to
understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other
Scriptures, to their own destruction."
This deceitful tactic isn't limited to just scripture interpretation. It's very common in politics and economics. You can approach things in two ways: 1. Evaluate the information and draw conclusions based on said information, or 2. Start with a conclusion and then search the data for something that seems to reinforce your pre-drawn conclusion. Larry Kudlow commits this offense in a recent column: http://tinyurl.com/28ckp2g
For as long as I can remember, Kudlow has lauded the market. The market consists of millions of investors who make decisions based on available information. Millions of brains working together are smarter than a handful of government bureaucrats so Kudlow claims that the movement of the market is the best measure to evaluate economic and political news as well as government decisions. For the past year or more, Kudlow has been criticizing the Fed's easy money policy claiming that it will result in high inflation which is detrimental to the economy despite the fact that the market has been increasing.
Last week the Fed announced that it will intensify its easy money policy buying hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds. Investors were anticipating this announcement by the Fed which came Wednesday afternoon, but no one was sure about how much the Fed was going to put down. The market showed little change during the first part of the week as investors awaited news of the Fed's decison. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the markets barely moved. The Fed announced its plans Wednesday after the market closed. On Thursday morning, markets around the world shot up; the Dow gained nearly a hundred points right after opening.
An objective observer might tend to suspect that this sudden distinct rise in world markets was a result of the Fed's action. But not Kudlow.
Kudlow had been lauding that the Fed's easy money policy was bad for the economy. Intensifying this policy in Kudlow's eyes would be even more detrimental to the economy. Kudlow's perfect market belief demands that the market would tank as a result of the Fed's Wednesday afternoon announcement. When markets shot up immediately after the Fed's announcement, this conflicted with Kudlow's belief system. But rather than evaluate his theories based on available information, Kudlow searched for something that would support his pre-conceived beliefs.
He found it in a White House press briefing on Thursday, November 4. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the Obama administration is “open” to negotiations on temporarily extending tax cuts for upper- income individuals to win extensions for middle-income families. Kudlow used the White House's openness to negotiating tax cuts for the wealthy as the reason the market increased.
Kudlow's problem is that Gibbs' announcement came AFTER the markets shot up. Gibbs' announcement was on the same day so Kudlow might have been able to convince himself and his ignorant fan base, but inquiring minds who investigated Kudlow's claims know that markets had already been rising significantly prior to Gibb's announcement.
