Cramer and Kudlow...

Cramer now espousing Kudlow's views:

"But, Larry said, what's holding it back? Why aren't we having a more robust economy? Why don't people want to create more businesses?

Indeed, why isn't small business, the true generator of jobs, taking off here? Nine years ago, when Larry and I last worked together, I would never have given him the answer that I tossed out instantaneously to his query: regulation -- too much regulation. My old partner smiled, Cheshire-like, knowing that, somehow, I had come to see the light that he has emitted daily since the ascent of President Obama to the White House.

But how could you not think that? Remember, I am of the micro, and just an hour before sitting down on the set of The Kudlow Report, I had interviewed the CEOs of TriNet (TNET) and Paychex (PAYX) , two immensely profitable companies designed to help small- and medium-sized businesses deal with the government and all of its rules that are now too hard to understand for just about any businessperson. Taxes, mandates, health care, rules for hiring and firing and processing: These are now well beyond the ken of any company, save the multinationals.

So you either use a company such as Paychex or Trinet or Workday (WDAY) or Cornerstone (CSOD) or Automatic Data Processing (ADP), or you succumb to red tape that can either wreck your business or land you in jail. These two alternatives keep you chained to your current enterprise, rather than creating one yourself.

Now, it is easy to argue that the government has simply become much more prolabor and that all of these regulations boost workers' rights. That may be true, but all of that is being sacrificed upon an altar that makes starting a new business too hard to do in the first place. You want to protect workers, but first you have to be able to create a company that can hire those workers, and the rules have simply become too difficult to follow. I know this all too well, not just from the companies in interview, but from the inn and restaurant I own -- two new developments that have emerged since I first sat across from Larry.

I could tell Larry was pleased with my evolution toward his position, even as I sure wish I hadn't needed to evolve at all. And, with that, we smacked fists, as we always did every night on Kudlow & Cramer, and bid each other a fond goodbye. Larry is now embarking on his next chapter of spreading patriotism, optimism and much-needed civility into an American polity starved for all three."