The New York Times today publishes a really weird article about a paper by two economists. It runs under the headline, "In Study, 2 Economists Say Intervention Helped Avert a 2nd Depression."
Missing from the article is the following information:
Where the paper was published (a peer-reviewed journal?)
A hyperlink to the paper itself
Any information about the authors other than the following identifiers: "Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics."
Had the Times chosen, it could have provided more detailed or useful descriptions of Messrs. Blinder and Zandi. Professor Blinder's Princeton University Web site, for example, describes him as a Clinton administration appointee and reports that "During the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, he was an economic adviser to Al Gore and John Kerry, and he continues to advise numerous Democratic politicians." And Mark Zandi is a registered Democrat who works for a company, Moody's, that contributed to the financial crisis by slapping AAA ratings on lots of junk. Mr. Zandi is hardly an impartial observer; he was a leading advocate of the very stimulus measures that he now wants to pass judgment on as a success. It'd be newsworthy if he declared the government intervention had failed, but his judgment that they succeeded is a dog-bites-man story.
Update: A related post with a link to the actual paper is here.
