From the archives of Conan O’Brien:
Recently in economic jokes Category
You must read Greg Mankiw's post from today entitled, "First-year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!" And please do it in the following order. First read what Mankiw wrote about young Quintus Pfuffnick winning the Nobel Prize in Economics (not really). Then click on the link to the AP story about the Nobel Peace Prize award. Well played, Greg.
Here is a fun little video parody from Reason.tv. (Thanks to Jason for the link.)
Here is a fun little video parody from Reason.tv. (Thanks to Jason for the link.)
My 9-year-old son showed me this today, and we laughed our heads off together.
Greg Mankiw posted this video sketch yesterday from The Daily Show on a major signal that the housing market has not yet stabilized. Hilarious! My favorite part is when Robert Shiller starts giving advice on how Geithner should redecorate his bathroom.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Home Crisis Investigation | ||||
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Mark Showalter sent me a link to this article in Roll Call last week describing how Democrats blocked House Republicans from mailing the diagram below to their constituents. The diagram below was created by the staff of Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) and the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee. I thought that this diagram was a funny enough caricature to include on the economic jokes page. However, despite the expansive, complicated, government-private, heavily regulated nature of both current and proposed U.S. health care, ours is probably the most privatized system of all developed countries.
My son found this for me in today's Sunday comics.
(Thanks to Mary Hokanson for sending me this.)
Ran (Rani) Spiegler is a Professor in the Department of Economics at University College London who specializes in game theory and industrial organization. He has a great economics jokes page on his website entitled "Quasi-economics." Most of the links are to satyrical pieces that he has authored. My favorites are "How (not) to write an NSF Grant," a piece about world population per capita, and the Ariel Rubinstein Seminar Comment Generator (ARSECOG). The last paper is particularly funny for anyone who has attended a seminar presentation of an economic theory paper.
(Thanks to Scott Findley for pointing me to this.)
(Thanks to Scott Findley for pointing me to this.)
Val Lambson pointed me to this great video of comedian Louis CK on the Conan O'Brien show on 10/2/08. The economic content of the video is that technology has progressed so quickly in recent years, but our baseline utility (happiness) adjusts almost immediately. One of my favorite lines is, "how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago."
Greg Mankiw posted this SNL video of Timothy Geithner commenting on the outcomes of the Treasury's stress tests of the American banking system.
Greg Mankiw posted this video of Barack Obama doing 16 minutes of comedy at the White House correspondents dinner on May 9, 2009 ("the 10-day anniversary of my first 100 days"). I think he closes with a pretty nice commentary about the American press.
I reported on the AEA humor session back in January. This video contains portions of Yoram Bauman's performance. I was sitting on the front row, just to the right of what the camera frame was showing. Enjoy.
Thanks to Mrs. D, who's not sure the guys on TV understand economics either, for the pointer. She found this on the excellent Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke blog, which had the following caption for the above cartoon:Marmaduke creator Brad Anderson has a dim awareness that something significant is going on in the news lately with economics, and he might as well try to write a comic strip about it.
What a smart show- I need to start watching more TV. South Park picks up on Higgs' "regime uncertainty" and all of Taylor's recent arguments against current monetary and fiscal policy:
Greg Mankiw posted this link yesterday (3/17/09, St. Patrick's Day) to another funny Flash video from the folks at JibJab--Leprechaun Bailout.
This cartoon appeared in the Wall Street Journal today. (Thanks Kerk.)
(Calculated risk posted a variant of this joke today.)
"McDonalds just added another item to its $1 value menu... Citigroup stock!"
"McDonalds just added another item to its $1 value menu... Citigroup stock!"
A student of mine sent me this cartoon.
A student of mine sent me this bumper sticker.
Here are some of my favorite cartoons about President Obama's nominees and their tax problems. (Thanks to Mary Hokanson for sending these to me.)
Continue reading Obama nominees and taxes cartoons.
A good one from the New Yorker:
Long or Short Capital make an excellent analogy.
(Kerk Phillips made my morning when I arrived at work today by telling me his discovery of the earliest example of habit persistence that he has ever heard of. The following is taken directly from Kerk's blog.)
"Habit persistence is a relatively new idea in economics and finance which argues that people's utility or sense of well-being rises with a rise in consumption only in the short-run. In the long-run, people become accustomed to higher levels of consumption and these new higher levels yield the same amount of utility as the lower ones did in the past."
"This is not a new concept, however. Last night while reading The Trojan Women, a play by Euripedes dating from 415 B.C., I ran across the following lines spoken by Andromache, Hector's wife, who is discussing the death of another woman, a former princess of Troy."
"Habit persistence is a relatively new idea in economics and finance which argues that people's utility or sense of well-being rises with a rise in consumption only in the short-run. In the long-run, people become accustomed to higher levels of consumption and these new higher levels yield the same amount of utility as the lower ones did in the past."
"This is not a new concept, however. Last night while reading The Trojan Women, a play by Euripedes dating from 415 B.C., I ran across the following lines spoken by Andromache, Hector's wife, who is discussing the death of another woman, a former princess of Troy."
Andromache: But if the choice is between a miserable life, mother, if it is between a miserable life and death, death is preferable. Because the dead feel no misery and they know nothing of grief, whereas for the living mortals, if a happy woman falls into misery she must deal with the memory of the joy she previously enjoyed. Her soul seeks the joys of the past.
John Cochrane had the following great quote in his insightful article, "Fiscal Stimulus, Fiscal Inflation or Fiscal Fallacies?"
"Others say that we should have a fiscal stimulus to 'give people confidence,' even if we have neither theory nor evidence that it will work. This astonishingly paternalistic argument was tried once with the TARP. Nobody could say how it would work in any way that made sense, but it was supposed to be important do to something grand to give people 'confidence.' You see how that worked out. Public prayer would work better and cost a lot less."
We have commented before on John Cochrane's uncanny ability to deliver biting rebuttals when challenged.
(Thanks to Mark Showalter for sending me this.)
"Others say that we should have a fiscal stimulus to 'give people confidence,' even if we have neither theory nor evidence that it will work. This astonishingly paternalistic argument was tried once with the TARP. Nobody could say how it would work in any way that made sense, but it was supposed to be important do to something grand to give people 'confidence.' You see how that worked out. Public prayer would work better and cost a lot less."
We have commented before on John Cochrane's uncanny ability to deliver biting rebuttals when challenged.
(Thanks to Mark Showalter for sending me this.)
Greg Mankiw posted a link to The Bailout Game this morning, and I couldn't resist putting it up here and on our economic jokes page. Here are a couple of tips for the game. When you get to AIG, don't bail them out and watch what happens. Also, you might enjoy the comments on the little ticker at the bottom of the page.
Authors
- Richard W. Evans is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Brigham Young University
- Jason DeBacker is a Washington, D.C. economist.