Yelling at a Wall #9474905

This morning, listeners were subjected to another display of the ignorance of NPR's Planet Money team regarding all matters of economics, as well as their gutless inability to actually call someone out when they're being disingenuous.

In this case, the story was about a new report form Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago and Atif Mian of the University of California, Berkeley, in which they claim that the "Cash for Clunkers" had no net positive effect. And yet, in his interview, Mr. Sufi states:

"You could argue that if you're in the depths of a really bad recession,  maybe shifting purchases of automobiles by even a couple months, maybe that's a useful thing to do."

Why yes, you could say that, since shifting demand forward in time to offset a decline in other sectors to maintain aggregate demand was one of the primary purposes of the program. I actually hope that Mr. Sufi is just pulling a Dubner & Levitt, trying to get himself some publicity by saying something that the press will pay attention to. Because the other options are that he's ignorant of the fundamentals of his own profession or just a political hack disguising his intentions in the apparent objectivity of his field.

Of course, the folks at Planet Money don't actually understand much economics, and when they do understand, they don't have the guts to call someone like Mr. Sufi out on his bullshit. Pathetic.

(And neither the story nor the study pay any attention to the significant net increase in the gas mileage of the cars that were purchased through the program. I mean, who cares about something like that?)