Stimulate!

[rowyn]

How to spend your eight bucks!

These are answers from economists to a question posed by the Wall Street Journal, not an article in the Onion, so some of the answers are serious.  But you can tell it was a struggle for some of them to answer with a straight face.  My favorite:

Paul Kasriel, Northern Trust: I would use the extra cash to start a hedge fund, which would purchase newly-issued asset-backed securities. I would finance my position through the Fed’s TALF program.

Comments

[fortyozspartan.livejournal.com]

Tyler Cowen, George Mason University: In my view, fixing the banking sector is more important than getting the stimulus right. So if you can afford to lose the money, go to a large bank (more likely to be insolvent), find their most overpriced service, and buy as much of it as you can. That way you are doing your part to recapitalize our banking system.

If you’re stuck for ideas, just keep on using ATM machines, owned by other banks, so you can pay large fees to take out small sums of money from your checking account. When you need to, take all of your withdrawals and deposit them back in the account once again and start all over with the process.


AhAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

[rowyn]

I think that was my second favorite, though "buy books on economics" was also up there.

[telnar.livejournal.com]

That was from Greg Mankiw (the author of the most popular introductory text on Economics). He likes to kid about how much of his other work is about marketing his book.