K&C Quotables

Some notable quotes from last night's Kudlow & Company:

Economic Resilience When you think about it, look at what we had to deal with in the first quarter. You had the credit market seizeup; you had Bear go out; you had Lehman close to going out—not because it should have, but because the financial markets were driving it that way; you had extraordinary moves by the Fed; you had continued collapse in homebuilding, and we still grew at 0.6 percent. That says to me if the economy was going to collapse, it would have collapsed then. It’s going to get better from here. Slowly, gradually, saucer-shaped, but it’s going to get better from here.

-Jim Awad, chairman of WP Stewart Asset Management

Oil, Gold & the Greenback Oil is going down. Gold is going down. The dollar is going to strengthen because the Fed is now out of the way of the dollar. And the dollar will find its natural level, which is a whole lot higher from here…The market forces are starting to assert themselves. Gold, remember, is down from $1030 dollars to well below $870. That is a big move, and oil is going to follow it down very soon…I think the next step is the European Central Bank cuts their interest rates—then we’re going to see the dollar do very well.

Vince Farrell, managing director of Scotsman Capital

Rescuing King Dollar It is always important for the Fed to act in a way to strengthen the dollar. And since they did not [yesterday], we’re going to have to get together and get John McCain to come up with a statement that as soon as he’s elected president, that he’s going to call a G8 monetary conference and define ways to support the dollar.

-Wayne Angell, former Fed governor

Help Across the Pond? I think that a lot of the initiative is going to come from the Europeans. They don’t want the euro at the level it is, relative to the dollar. They’re going to be working on that.

-Bob McTeer, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Cherrypicking I wouldn’t avoid all stocks like I’ve been saying for the past few months on your show. I think you can cherrypick with some strong brands. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned some food stocks [Kraft (KFT) & Del Monte (DLM) ]. We’re seeing Buffett buying some of those. Some other companies have come in – very strong brands – that during a period of inflation, can pass along price increases. I think the transports are starting to hurt now, because they’ve reached the limit on their ability to pass along those price increases to their customers.

-Mike Ozanian, Forbes Magazine Senior Editor

Productivity is Key In an era of slow growth, productivity is key. How do you get productivity? You get productivity via technology. So a company like Cisco, I think, is going to do extremely well in this environment. You have to sort of rifle-select. I don’t think you can just say, ‘I’m going to be long or short this category or that category.’ You have to go for stock specific.

-Vince Farrell, managing director of Scotsman Capital

Skousen Likes Visa [My single favorite investment is Visa.] I still like Visa. I think Visa is just a money-machine. It’s going higher. It’s another Mastercard kind of story. I also like Bank of Montreal (BMO). That has been a solid performer in the last few months. It didn’t deserve to be hit down with all of the other financials.

-Mark Skousen, financial economist, author, editor of the financial advice newsletter, Forecasts & Strategies