It's a well known fact that liberals are never wrong. Since all the people mentioned are liberal, one must conclude some were "early". Heh.

Why am I not surprised about this coming from a newspaper that takes payola from lobbyists in return for access to politicians.

Mark Zandi said that the economy and stock market bottomed in March. I don't think he's backed off that, nor have other people who have made the same call from JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Legg Mason, to name a few.

Is the problem that we're entering an L shaped recovery, that the economy hasn't actually bottomed or that Biden really messed up by not giving the administration's first stimulus time to work? Because, if we are in an L-shaped recovery then the slow moving stimulus was a brilliant idea -- count on all the rescues to get us out of the worst months but then the long-running stimulus to tide us through a painfully slow recovery.

At the time that the stimulus package was first passed, there were MANY voices, including economists, who said that it needed to be much bigger -- bigger than the version that was on the table before being partly eviscerated (including in particular by the damaging cut of over $40 billion in badly needed aid to the states) in order to win over the needed handful of Republican votes. Economists then and since have indeed been predicting the kind of unemployment we have now, and that it would rise this year to double digits IN THE OFFICIAL RATE which is only about half of the actual under/unemployment
rate, already at depression levels.

The next step is the logical conclusion advocated by most of these economists, at least as an afterthought expressed at times, that there will be further stimulus measures needed. Interestingly, there is much more discussion of a second stimulus in the RW press, which opposes it, than either the NY Times or other media, including TPM Cafe & affiliates, more staunchly liberal than the NY Times. It is HIGH TIME that liberal and left-of-liberal venues focus MUCH more attention on this need. How this stimulus should be put together, and how it should be constructed TO GENERATE MAXIMUM STIMULUS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, rather than either a weak (as in tax cuts) or delayed (as in longer term construction projects) benefits to the economy.

In particular, it appears to me that a very large package, likely not as large as the original $787 billion (or as large as the specifically SPENDING portion of it), should have been put together and advocated by progressives, with a rising chorus as the economy indeed followed the "pessimistic" path that many had projected/predicted. It is important that the RW is arguing full-force AGAINST a second stimulus, but these arguments are not being answered, except in the most cursory forms (like Ruth Coniff's recent piece in THE PROGRESSIVE).

I think that there should not just be a piece or two, but a major theme of discussion, perhaps with one of the table-for-one or book discussion weeks devoted to this specific topic. I would be interested in Dean Baker's take on the idea of a massive amount (restoring all the aid to states cut from the original stimulus, and much more as Rx) of bailout & other monies to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs -- and often regressive tax increases, though fortunately less so than it might be given the domiinance of Democrats -- at the state & local government level; also there should be included much more direct aid to prevent or reverse foreclosures, and aid to public higher education & students in it. These it seems are much more likely to save jobs and spending, prevent regressive tax increases, and spur short term spending (or prevent damage) than the longer term or weaker stuff in much of the original stimulus. What sort of things does Dean Baker suggest for SHORT TERM stimulus, and what other responses to the proliferating RW arguments against a second stimulus are there.
I understand that to fully answer these and related questions would require more than another column, let alone just a comment, but it's a ball that needs to get rolling.

I plan to put up a 'reader post' soon on this issue, including lots of linx to recent media pieces on the subject

Zandi's use of the word "anyone" -- as in: "the economy is worse than anyone expected -- was clearly wrong. But if his larger point was that the collapse in employment since February has been worse than that expected by the so-called (and spectacularly mis-named) Blue Chip consensus, he's clearly right. And the administration's forecasts, as always, were based on that consensus.

Wall Street thought so, too: The stock market's entire rally since March was built on the idea the trough of the recession would come in the second quarter and the recovery would begin in the second half -- which, it's now clear, isn't gonna happen.

We are in some pretty shit, in other words. But singling Mark Zandi -- one of the better, and rightly pessimistic, of the mainstream economists -- for criticism is pretty unfair.

OK! You're brilliant. We're starving. G'bye!

i.e. Jim Cramer