CNN Says That Economists Don't Belieive the Stimulus Helped

April 27, 2010

Dean Baker

The headline of the CNNMoney.com piece is that: “Economists: The stimulus didn’t help.” This is striking. The independent economists at the Congressional Budget Office certainly think it helped, adding more than 2 percentage points to GDP growth and lowering the unemployment rate by over a percentage point. Many prominent private economic forecasting firms, including Moodys.com, Global Insights, and Macroeconomic Advisors, also believe that it helped.

So, what’s the basis for this story? A survey of 68 members of the National Association of Business Economists (NABE) found that 73 percent thought that the stimulus had no impact on employment. This is not exactly a representative group of economists. NABE tend to be far more conservative than the economics profession as a whole. It is wrong for CNN to present their views as representative.