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March 28, 2006
The $6 billion lie: why Ratner's fiscal claim is Swiss cheese
Atlantic Yards Report
It's the $6-BILLION lie that won't die.
Lie, major misoverestimation... whatever you want to call it, Forest City Ratner is still touting the $6-BILLION figure divined by the Ratner-commissioned report written by sports-venue-economist-turned-hired-gun Andrew Zimbalist.
Currently the figure is playing a starring role "in a letter they're providing to state legislators in an effort to lobby Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver."
The Zimbalist report has been discredited and contradicted by reports issued since the Atlantic Yards proposal was in its infancy:
It results from manipulated statistics, an enormous (and methodologically flawed) overestimate of revenues, and an omission (and then an underestimate) of costs.
The study's conclusions--and FCR's manipulation of them--are challenged in reports by two city agencies and two outside analysts, not to mention an application of some economic common sense.
Atlantic Yards Report listed 10 reasons "to question the purported $6-billion figure," and ran out of gas at 15.
Posted by lumi at March 28, 2006 8:39 AM