Newsbusters reports:
Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, comments monthly on the ADP private-sector employment report his firm compiles. He is "often quoted in national and global publications and interviewed by major news media outlets, and is a frequent guest on CNBC, NPR, Meet the Press, CNN, and various other national networks and news programs."Mark Zandi (Democrat-Obama-Hillary) and don't you get negative on less than 3% GDP growth in 10 years.
Zandi has also been the economy's head cheerleader during much of the era of the historically weak Obama "recovery." During the past few months, Zandi has openly questioned the validity of the government's estimates of economic growth, believing that they are materially understated. Though I have argued that the official unemployment rate is not credible, Zandi does not have a problem with Uncle Sam's usually decent jobs reports. In fact, they are his main form of "proof," despite badly lagging productivity, that the government is understating gross domestic product (GDP) growth. His persistence on this issue led me to do some research.
After all, it's the GDP numbers which make the Obama administration's policies look historically bad. Investor's Business Daily and others have noted that reported growth since the most recent recession is the weakest of any recovery since World War II.
Meanwhile, the employment growth numbers and the declining unemployment rate continue to be the Obama administration's monthly highlights (but to be clear, job growth has been nowhere near Reaganesque or late-1990s Clintoneque). On ADP's post-report conference calls during two of the past three months, Zandi has advised those on the call, in essence: "Don’t pay attention to GDP, (but) do pay attention to the jobs numbers because we can count jobs."
