Voodoo Economics

“What we might call, by way of eminence, the Dismal Science.”

-- Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher on economics

One day, spurred by a comment left on my blog, I called my friend who works on Wall St. My friend is a staunch conservative who majored in economics. His wife, bless her soul, doesn’t like me too much and thinks I should be excommunicated for my sexual views. LOL!

Anyway, I’m not very bright when it comes to economics and finances, I believe my ex-wife is correct in her observation that I should never be allowed to handle my own finances, let alone talk about them. Whenever I have a question on economics, I always call my Wall St. friend. Lately he hasn’t been returning my calls, but I was able to reach him yesterday and he agreed to talk to me on condition that I would never tell his wife we met and if I didn’t interrupt him with my “radical” views. I agreed and even offered to buy him lunch considering the market is right now more radical (anarchy!) than I could ever dream of being. LOL

We met at a popular eatery near Wall St and when we sat down, I immediately blurted out, “Laffer Curve! Tell me about it!” That prompted a hush over the mid afternoon crowd -- nervous glances from others in the restaurant. My friend begged me to lower my voice, “Eddie, things are pretty much volatile around here these days, please don’t start a stampede.”

I promised to be quiet and he began to tell me about this mysterious, all-knowing talisman -- the Laffer Curve.

Now, keep in kind my friend, though a conservative, believes supply-side economics to be the biggest con ever perpetrated on the American people. He’s an “old school” republican: republicans that concerned themselves mostly about such things as deficits, inflation, and excessive spending; republicans who didn’t care much about cutting taxes and were quite willing (like Eisenhower and Ford) to raise taxes in order to balance the budget.