Fortune.com Touts Liberal-Authored Paper as Evidence of Stimulus Success

The media pompoms are out again.

In his July 28 “Street Sweep” blog, Fortune.com reporter Colin Barr highlighted a paper by Moody’s Analytics claiming government stimulus funds “averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0.” The paper was authored by notorious spending-advocate Mark Zandi and Keynesian sympathizer Alan Blinder of Princeton University, and Barr parroted their theories:

“What makes the current 9.5 percent unemployment rate look good?

How about one that reaches 16.5 percent? A paper by Moody's economist Mark Zandi and Princeton University scholar Alan Blinder contends we would have reached that threshold had the government not poured trillions of dollars into the economy after the financial meltdown of 2008.”

Barr heralded the paper as a much needed “endorsement” for another stimulus package given the country’s current financial situation:

“With Washington again chewing over the need to stimulate the economy as Europe struggles with its debt problems and government spending here loses steam, the economists throw in a timely endorsement of the 2009 fiscal stimulus program.”

Not until the second to last paragraph did Barr mention Zandi’s 2008 prediction that unemployment would hit 10 percent without a stimulus package. Barr noted:

“Obama, meanwhile, has been criticized in some quarters for having predicted unemployment would top out at 8%.”

Despite Zandi and Obama, unemployment did reach 10 percent even with the stimulus package that would supposedly keep it under eight percent. Furthermore, the stimulus package increased the national debt and created a negative business environment.

Given the state of the economy, one would think the media would wise up to the stimulus’s flaws, but the media continue being Obama’s biggest stimulus cheerleaders.