According to Tosmai Puenpatom, an economist I talked to at the Philadephia Federal Reserve Bank, there are numerous factual errors with the WMC's ad claiming "Wisconsin economic growth ranks second in the nation."
First of all, the bank doesn't do rankings on economic growth, they do forecasts of economic growth. So saying that Wisconsin ranks second in economic growth is untrue by any metric.
[img_assist|nid=472384|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=300|height=203]Second, according to the their most recent forecasts, Wisconsin does have a halfway decent forecast, but it is quickly fading and there is no way to construe that it is the second-best forecast in the country. The current forecast by the Philly fed is that Wisconsin will have a growth rate of 1.62% over the next six months, which is the 14th best forecast in the country for economic growth.
However, keep in mind that the Philly Fed's six month forecast of Wisconsin has been all over the map the last six months, as the graph to the left indicates. Six months ago, Wisconsin had one of the lowest growth forecasts in the country of .55%, then, three months later, the Philly Fed was forecasting Wisconsin's growth rate would be the highest they've ever forecasted for Wisconsin-- 3.71%.
Now, even though the Philly Fed's forecast clearly is returning to its previous slow-growth forecast for Wisconsin, WMC is promoting the irrelevant and outdated forecast of a few months ago.
What WMC is saying would be like telling a group of campers in the middle of rain storm that what they were experiencing is the second best weather in the country, because several weeks ago the weatherman said clear and sunny weather was on the way-- even though the weatherman has since downgraded the forecast and their is no sign of the rain letting up based on current job numbers that still show Wisconsin at the back of the pack in jobs numbers.