Gerald Friedman's Analysis of the Sanders Spending Plan Just Took A Hit Below the Waterline by Kevin Drum for Mother Jones

I've questioned Bernie's math assumptions and refusal to be explicit about his policies for weeks. Most of all I've criticized his banking his radical monetary policy on the papers of one economist -- who is voting for Clinton, btw. It will be interesting to see if the TV media expresses ANY coverage of what is becoming an explosive tent of incompetency in the Sanders camp. We'll be posting the analyses from a variety of sources, beginning with Mother Jones, as a gift to Sanders supporters. Kevin Drum has questioned the economic assumptions of Bernie's plans and then backed off a bit, after hearing Bro rage.

"The saga of Gerald Friedman's analysis of Bernie Sanders' domestic spending plan continues. I initially said it was ridiculously optimistic, but then backed off a little bit. In the meantime, defenders of Sanders and Friedman demanded that critics do an actual analysis of the plan before slagging it further. So now Christina and David Romer have done that. It's not pretty:

Unfortunately, careful examination of Friedman’s work confirms the old adage, “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

....Friedman says that the additional spending under the proposed policies would rise from $300 billion in the first year to close to $600 billion in the fifth....An output increase of 9% in 2026 from this amount of spending is grossly out of line with all existing evidence about the impact of changes in government spending.....Friedman’s figures for the effect of additional government spending exceed conventional ones by at least a factor of four."

Romer and Romer on Sanders Economic Plan: Sorry Bernie, It's A Crock Forbes

Not a crock of anything you understand, we wouldn’t be so rude here in the pages of a family magazine like Forbes. Rather, Christina and Paul Romer have done an analysis of the Bernie Sanders economic plan and looked at Gerard Friedman’s analysis of it and come to the conclusion that it’s a complete crock. They are in places rather more polite about some of the assumptions than I would be (specifically with reference to the financial transactions tax) and they also, very interestingly, think they see a ghastly logical flaw in the reasoning behind Friedman’s estimation.

It should be said here that the Romers are not economic lightweights: Christina was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for a couple of years for Obama. It should also be said that the are party partisan (not in their economic work, in their politics) Democrats even if tending rather more to the Clinton axis this time around. Just so that people know where this critique is coming from.

Their paper is here and it’s worth a read in full:

Among Dems, Clinton Regains Popularity Advantage Over Sanders Gallup

Hillary Clinton has reclaimed her position as the best-liked presidential candidate among Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, a sign that her candidacy is recovering a key advantage she recently surrendered to rival Bernie Sanders. Clinton's net favorable score stands at +55 for the week of Feb. 18-24, 2016, a 10-percentage-point increase from her low point recorded over Jan. 27-Feb.10. This latter time period overlapped with her landslide loss to Sanders in the New Hampshire primary. Sanders' net favorable over the past week, by contrast, stands at +44, well below Clinton's score and a steep fall from the +57 he boasted in late January/early February.