A strengthening of the dollar and a significantly lower oil price are weapons President Barack Obama could one day use against Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to the United States dealing from a position of strength, according to Keith McCullough, founder of investment-research firm Hedgeye Risk Management.
"You look at Putin and he's pushing us around and the No. 1 weapon that we have as a country that neither [former President George W.] Bush or Obama has used is called a weapon of mass currency appreciation, the dollar," McCullough told Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
"Putin doesn't exist, [former Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez … wouldn't have existed, neither do these Middle Eastern overlords that capitalize on oil, if a weak dollar doesn't exist," said the chief executive officer of the New Haven, Connecticut-based firm.
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A change in the Federal Reserve's program of quantitative easing would also be a key to the strategy.
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"I'd say, 'Look, Vlad, I'm going to taper, then I'm going to tighten, then I am going to knock that price of oil back … and we're going to have a real conversation,' " he said.
"We really need to embrace the weapon that we have as a country, which is the most powerful weapon that we've had for a very long period of time, which is, of course, the currency of the people, and that currency has basically been de-botched and devalued 'til the cows come home," he said.
"We need to start to stand up for these things and that'll help us stand up against guys like Vladimir Putin."
McCullough said Bush and Obama "did the same thing that [former Presidents Richard] Nixon and [Jimmy] Carter did for a decade." They devalued the dollar.
"They really monetized the U.S. debt, and spent until they couldn't spend anymore," he said.
"Just stop doing that. Bring in, probably, a guy like Larry Summers to deliver the message because you do need somebody to stand up with a backbone and actually say it in a really forceful way, which, at a bare minimum, that's what Larry Summers can do. $65 [per barrel] oil would be fantastic for the American people and it would be absolutely pulverizing to Putin's power," he said.
"This is a Canadian with a green card telling Americans it's time to bring home the bacon."
Early Thursday, brent, the benchmark for international crudes, was up 90 cents to $112.40 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London, the Associated Press reported. West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery advanced 53 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $108.09 a barrel at 11:05 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg News reported.
Meanwhile, McCullough also advocated for a tax cut.
"The only way to get a tax cut, if somebody's actually not going to cut my taxes, is to increase the purchasing power of the currency," he said.
"A strong dollar policy is something [former President] Ronald Reagan understood, it's something that [former President] Bill Clinton understood. It's something that the two presidents that have had the most joyous period of U.S. growth in the last 40 years have both had in common."
McCullough was asked about the importance of using time stamps while making recommendations on Twitter.
"I basically run my mouth on Twitter and the reality is that because I've created that kind of a platform, I don't have a conflict of interest," McCullough said.
"The only people that should be concerned with what I'm saying are my clients. My clients know what my research is. They paid for it. I have an open pipe to say whatever I want, whenever I want, in terms of what is going up and down and whether I think that's going to happen," he said.
"Time stamping it … is a really important thing because, of course, most people have an opinion on the market, but most people don’t want to be held to account on what the timing of that opinion might be."
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