Tag: Humor

A $5,000 Bill on the Sidewalk

Someone is offering a free $5,000 bill tonight over at Intrade.com:

That’s right. You can sell 9,999 shares of The Donald (not me, the other one) at $0.52 a piece. In just that one trade, you can pocket almost $5,200 of free money. Unless, of course, you believe that Donald Trump could actually be elected president.

So why haven’t I picked up this $5,000+ bill? Because I haven’t seen an unambiguous  statement that buying and selling on Intrade is completely legit for U.S. citizens. Not worth the risk.

If Gary Gensler (Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission) or other relevant regulator would issue a ruling clarifying that Intrade trading is copacetic, that would be much appreciated.

For the latest Trump action, click here.

P.S. For sticklers: yes, the margin requirements on this trade could be rather a nuisance.

I Bid $28,000 for Mars

Over at Boing Boing, Lee Billings interviews astrophysicist Greg Laughlin about his formula for valuing planets. Or, more precisely, measuring how much it appears we value those planets based on (a) how much we spend to search for them and (b) planet characteristics like stellar age, stellar mass, light, heat, brightness, etc.

According to the formula, Earth is worth about $5 quadrillion. Which seems about right if you believe my only-partly-joking estimate that the United States alone is worth $1.4 quadrillion.

Mars, however, rings in at a measly $14,000. That seems low to me, so let me make an offer.

Dear Marvin: I would gladly pay you $28,000 for your home, Mars. That’s a 100% mark-up on today’s value. And you and your goons could continue to live there. Thanks, –Donald     P.S. Please send Spirit back.

And then there’s Venus. Laughlin ran his equation two ways for the brightest planet in our sky:

Venus is a great example. It does pretty well in the equation, and actually gets a value of about one and a half quadrillion dollars if you tweak its reflectivity a bit to factor in its bright clouds. This echoes what unfolded for Venus in the first half of the 20th century, when astronomers saw these bright clouds and thought they were water clouds, and that it was really humid and warm on the surface. It gave rise to this idea in the 1930s that Venus was a jungle planet. So you put this in the formula, and it has an explosive valuation. Then you’d show up and face the reality of lead melting on the surface beneath sulfuric-acid clouds, and everyone would want their money back!

If Venus is valued using its actual surface temperature, it’s like 10-12 of a single cent. @home.com was valued on the order of a billion dollars for its market cap, and the stock is now literally worth zero. Venus is unfortunately the @home.com of planets.

In short, Venus might be worth as much as the United States or nothing. If the astrophysicist thing doesn’t work out, Laughlin could clearly find work as an economist. 

Ode to Germany, a Mini-Song by Merle Hazard

Mini is apparently the new thing in popular economics. Tyler Cowen’s new mini-book is getting lots of attention from the blogosphere. And econ-crooner Merle Hazard has released a set of mini-songs about the European debt crisis.

Best so far is Ode to Germany:

For more, click on over to Paul Solman’s page at the PBS Newshour, where you can also find info about their lyric-writing contest.

Panda Prices Plummet

In another sign of deflationary pressures, the Washington Post’s Michael Ruane reports that panda prices have plummeted:

The National Zoo has reached an agreement with China to extend for five years the stay of Washington’s beloved black and white bears at a dramatically reduced cost. …

The old $1 million-a year, 10-year lease expired Dec. 6.

Update: Sarah Brumfield (AP via Washington Times) reports the new price is $500,000 per year, half the previous level.

Google More Popular Than Wikipedia … in 1900

Google unveiled a new toy yesterday. The Books Ngram Viewer lets users see how often words and phrases were used in books from 1500 to 2008. Other bloggers have already run some fun economics comparisons. Barry Ritholz, for example, has does inflation vs. deflation, Main Street vs. Wall Street, and Gold vs. Oil.

In the humorous glitch department, I tried out the names of two Internet services I use everyday, Google and Wikipedia. For some reason, the Ngram viewer defaults to the timeperiod 1800 to 2000 (rather than 2008), and this was the chart I got (click to see a larger version):

It’s amazing to see references to Wikipedia as far back as the 1820s. Impressive foresight. Google overtook Wikipedia in the late 1800s and, with the exception of a brief period in the 1970s, has led ever since.

Johnny Depp and the New Tax Law

When the President signs the big tax deal later today, will he be cutting income taxes for most families or sparing them a tax hike? Will he be slashing the estate tax or resurrecting it?

Those questions have a clear answer in the official budget world: the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 cuts both income taxes and estate taxes. Period. Why? Because current law is the official yardstick. And that law says that the 2001 and 2003 income and estate tax cuts will expire when the ball hits bottom in Times Square.

But existing law is not the only reasonable benchmark. Another way to look at things is to ask how taxes will change from 2010 to 2011. Viewed that way, extending the 2001 and 2003 cuts is not a tax cut; it’s a way to prevent a tax hike. And the estate tax deal is actually a tax increase: there was no estate tax in 2010, but there will be one—though small by historical standards—in 2011. In addition, as noted by my Tax Policy Center colleague  Bob Williams, many low-income families will see their taxes go up because the gains from 2011’s payroll tax holiday will be more than offset by the expiration of 2010’s Making Work Pay tax credit.

Depending on your perspective, then, today’s tax deal is anything from a tax increase to a major tax cut. It all depends what baseline you use for measuring.

Which brings us to Johnny Depp. Depp plays the title character in the new film “The Tourist”. He doesn’t know anything about budget baselines, but he does learn how perceptions depend on what your benchmark is:

Inspector: Now, you wish to report a murder?
Depp: No, some people tried to kill me.
Inspector: I was told you were reporting a murder.
Depp: Attempted murder.
Inspector: Ah, that is not so serious.
Depp: No, not when you downgrade it from murder. When you upgrade it from room service, it’s quite serious.

Should today’s tax deal be compared to room service or to murder? I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide.

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