Zandi was overly optimistic a year ago. And now he’s overly pessimistic:

“We have a very soft economy and if the Fed doesn’t lower rates then the economy could fall into a recession,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

Could he have a conflict of interest if some of his corporate clients stand to benefit from a bail out (in the form of lowered short-term interest rates)? I’m not happy that the Fed has bowed to pressure from the whiners at Wall Street (and their consultants, like Zandi).

I remember now that Economy.com was purchased by Moody’s some time back. Moody’s is responsible for giving AAA ratings to MBS (essentially junk), that many pension funds, and other institutional investors, ended up buying. It turned out that Moody’s, like S&P, had a tremendous incentive to give prime ratings to junk bonds.

And now Mark joins the chorus of whiners asking for (and getting!) a bailout. Disgusting.