The Wall Street Journal reports on the strange band of people converging on Atlanta over the next three days: We have our conventions after the New Year, because that is when hotel rates are cheapest.
Two personal anecdotes on the penurious nature of economists:
(1) Many years ago, I went to the ASSA meeting in New Orleans. My plane arrived late, and I hadn't eaten, so I went into a bar to get a burger. Once I sit down, the bartender says to me, "you're not one of those as****e economists, are you." I said, "no sir, not me." He said, "good, those as****e economists are so cheap that all they'll drink is beer. Now what will you have."
(2) There was an chain Italian restaurant where I would sometimes go to lunch with colleagues. It was one of these places that gives you all the salad and rolls that you can eat if you order an entree--they just put a couple of salad bowls on the table, and refill them when they're empty. When one of our colleagues would learn a group was going, he would come along, eat the salad and rolls, and not order anything.
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I was at an ASSA meeting in N'awlins several years ago. Took a taxi from the airport to the hilton. cab driver asked me just what convention this was, since he had never seen worse tippers.
i also noticed fewer streetwalkers in the french quarter than i had other times i had been there, leading me to coin the phrase "the assa meetings - when all the hookers go on vacation"
I remember going to lunch with Tom Pogue and having him use those long gangly arms of his to reach back and get the biggest piece of strawberry pie he possibly could because all of them were the same price. It cracked me up every time.
Krugman's time is worth more than that of all the other bloggers!
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/atlanta-is-ours-and-cheaply-won/
So economists don't practice what they preach. They want other people to spend lavishly to keep the economy moving, but won't spend lavishly themselves.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it.
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