Thirty-eight of fifty-four economists can't be wrong. That's the number of economists who, in a recent survey by the Wall Street Journal ($), said that "the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act boosted growth and mitigated job losses." In other words, 70 percent of economists think that the Recovery Act has helped the nation. Looks like somebody's been reading the many, many official reports which have repeatedly said the exact same thing. But I guess something just isn't true until a majority of randomly selected Ph.Ds say it, right?

And speaking of job creation, Robert Broadsky from Government Executive has a good catch: March 17 was the last day for recipients to hand in any changes to their reports from last quarter, and because of these changes the Recovery Board has revised that quarter's reported job count number up to 608,203, from 599,108. Further proof that the Recovery Act is helping prop up the nation's economy. Just remember that these numbers, for the October 1-December 31 quarter, and are not cumulative, and cannot be added to job counts from other quarters, thanks to new reporting guildlines explained here.