Warning: It's by Mark Zandi. Zandi is a hack and a mouthpiece for the ratings agencies. For one example among many, see this link: http://www.ritholtz.com/b

Warning: It's by Mark Zandi. Zandi is a hack and a mouthpiece for the ratings agencies. For one example among many, see this link: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/zandi/ http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/zandi/ More seriously, the link is just a summary of what Zandi's model predicted the recent stimulus would do. It's worth noting that: 1) Pretty much every other economist on the left and right disagree with him. On the right they think all his multipliers are too high, and even on the left they think the way he ranked them is bizarre. He reckons one of the best tax cuts is a lump sum refund - despite copious theoretical and empirical backing for the proposition that it's actually one of the worst (because it's most likely to trigger Ricardian Equivalency). 2) The actual results of the stimulus are starting to become clear, and they disagree with him too, both in terms of overall magnitude and, in particular, his completely batshit rankings. He thinks aid to state governments is one of the worst ways of spending cash, but infrastructure spending is quite good. In reality the aid to state governments was one of the most effective line items, while the infrastructure spending was a black hole in terms of job creation. My advice is to go hunt up an actual respected economist (Romer or Barro are both great on this area) and read what they have to say. Zandi is neither respected nor, at the risk of being cruel, an economist.