Politics

Free to Choose Rudy

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It's easy to forget with the dulcet tones of Arthur Branch massaging our ears, but Rudy Giuliani is still the frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Two nights ago he appeared on Larry Kudlow's goofy CNBC show* and talked almost exclusively about economics, at one point sounding like he regretted his days as a grandstanding, trader-busting U.S. Attorney.

Mr. GIULIANI: Sarbanes Oxley is almost another example of what we're talking about with that housing market. And I've watching this from the time I was US attorney in the Justice Department. You go through a period of time in which we have these things happen where people commit crimes, which is kind of a part of human nature. Some people just commit crimes. Then we over regulate, then we have to go back and correct the over regulation. And I think probably that's what happened to Sarbanes Oxley. We reacted. We reacted to some pretty serious crimes that were committed. Congress reacted. Probably over reacted. Some of the provisions are somewhat unrealistic about certifications--certificiations that somebody just can't make accurately.

KUDLOW: Mm-hmm.

Mr. GIULIANI: I ran a city like New York, it's like running a big gigantic multi-national company. I had 300,000 employees. I remember when I first came into it with a bond offering and they wanted me to certify it, with everything with accurate. I said, `I can't sign that.' I said I'm a votist, I'm a--I'm not going to sign because I don't know if it's accurate, you're going to have to go back and make the certification accurate. You're going to have to say other people represented this to me. And you've got to give an accurate picture of how this operation really works. And I think Sarbanes has pushed us to a point where things that are being required are almost fiction and that's not a good thing.

Giuliani so impressed Wall Street Journaler (and Club for Growth exile) Stephen Moore that he said this:

Today we find out that Steve Forbes is signing on to Giuliani's campaign. So is Rudy carving out a niche as the fiscal conservative candidate who'll govern like Reagan without the speeches to the March for Life?

*I like Kudlow's economics, but he's way too prone to linking movement in the stock market to things traders don't care about but right-wingers do. See here.