Grow your own dope -- plant an economist.
Economic forecasters assume everything, except responsibility.
A friend of mine was taking a class by Milton Friedman at the U of Chicago, and after a late night studying fell asleep in class. This sent Friedman into a little tizzy and he came over and pounded on the table, demanding an answer to a question he had just posed to the class, my friend, shaken but now awake said " I'm sorry Professor, I missed the question but the answer is increase the money supply."
We love it on the floor of the CBOT.
What does it take to be a good economist? An unshakeable grasp of the obvious!
Achieving free trade is like getting to heaven. Everyone one wants to get there, but not too soon.
President Truman once said he wants an economic adviser who is one handed. Why? Because normally the economists giving him economic advice state "On one hand and on the other..."
On the first day God created the sun - so the Devil countered and created sunburn. On the second day God created sex. In response the Devil created marriage. On the third day God created an economist. This was a tough one for the Devil, but in the end and after a lot of thought he created a second economist!
An Economist is someone who didn't have enough personality to become an accountant.
An economist is someone who knows 100 ways to make love, but doesn't know any women/men.
An economist returns to visit his old school. He's interested in the current exam questions and asks his old professor to show some. To his surprise they are exactly the same ones to which he had answered 10 years ago! When he asks about this the professor answers: "the questions are always the same - only the answers change!"
Reproduced below is an Economist Joke that illustrates the separate facilities solution to an externality problem.
Three guys decide to play a round of golf: a priest, a psychologist, and an economist.
They get behind a *very* slow two-some, who, despite a caddy, are taking all day to line up their shots and four-putting every green, and so on. By the 8th hole, the three men are complaining loudly about the slow play ahead and swearing a blue streak, and so on. The priest says, "Holy Mary, I pray that they should take some lessons before they play again." The psychologist says, "I swear there are people that like to play golf slowly." The economist says, "I really didn't expect to spend this much time playing a round of golf."
By the 9th hole, they have had it with slow play, so the psychologist goes to the caddy and demands that they be allowed to play through. The caddy says O.K., but then explains that the two golfers are blind, that both are retired firemen who lost their eyesight saving people in a fire, and that explains their slow play, and would they please not swear and complain so loud.
The priest is mortified; he says, "Here I am a man of the cloth and I've been swearing at the slow play of two blind men." The psychologist is also mortified; he says, "Here I am a man trained to help others with their problems and I've been complaining about the slow play of two blind men."
The economist ponders the situation-finally he goes back to the caddy and says, "Listen, the next time could they play at night."
Q: What's the difference between a finance major and an economics major?
A: Opportunity Cost
The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The Second Law of Economists: They're both wrong.
If all the economists were laid end to end
a) it would be a good thing
b) they would be more comfortable
c) they would never reach conclusion
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
f) they would point in different directions
We have 2 classes of forecasters: Those who don't know . . . and those who don't know they don't know.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.
- Winston Churchill
There is also a joke about the last Mayday parade in the Soviet Union. After the tanks and the troops and the planes and the missiles rolled by there came ten men dressed in black.
"Are they Spies?" Asked Gorby?
"They are economists," replies the KGB director, "imagine the havoc they will wreak when we set them loose on the Americans"
The following joke is a joint invention of Preston McAfee, Phil Reny and several so far anonymous writers.
Why God Never Received Tenure at the University
1. Because he had only one major publication.
2. And it was in Hebrew.
3. And it had no cited references.
4. And it wasn't published in a refereed journal or even submitted for peer review.
5. And some even doubt he wrote it himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world but what has he done since?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate his results.
9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry, he tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
11. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he often punished them, or just deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. He had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
If an economist and an IRS agent were both drowning and you could only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper?
They say that Christopher Columbus was the first economist. When he left to discover America, he didn't know where he was going. When he got there he didn't know where he was. And it was all done on a government grant.
p/s photo: possibly the best photo of Fiona Xie that I have
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