Economics has never been my cup of tea. For that matter, studies have never been my cup of tea. But, I’ll whine about economics this time around. The economics prof has a reputation for being quite heartless with regard to the thrashing out of assignments. We have been warned by our seniors that we are expected to ‘expect the unexpected’ in his class. ( Oooooh... creepy stuff man !). And just last evening, he lived up to his reputation. While he spent most of the class making us regret joining an MBA course and made almost all of us, even the economics grads, look like absolute dunces, he decided it was time to have a little fun at our expense. Somehow, every time he asks questions that are at a level way beyond my meager comprehension, I have a picture of Mr.Burns (Simpsons) running in my head where the prof has positioned his hands in a condescending manner and is going, “ Eeeexxcccellent Murthy !!!”.
Anyway, one of the assignments involved a presentation on the ‘Economics of the Great Depression of 1929’. One might think that this is a fairly easy task which involves mere plagiarism of data from the internet, but alas…thou art mistaken dear reader! It isn’t as easy as we thought it would be to pull up statistics like GDP, unemployment and other equally bamboozling economic jargon from some bygone era. A few hours into the assignment, I quickly realize that the Americans are the root cause of all my economics class related sleep woes.
Here’s how one’s actions today might impact someone many decades in the future. Way back in 1929, if only the Americans were more careful with their spending and were not so dependent on their newly found credit system, if only the law-makers were a little more prudent with their monetary policy, if only the automobile sector had been proper in predicting their numbers and not churn out cars like loaves of bread, if only the bankers were more critical of their statistics and not been buoyant so blindly…if only none of these had happened…I WOULD HAVE GOT SOME SLEEP TONIGHT!!!
Thanks to the Americans, I am made to suffer without much sleep and am forced to spend my evening comprehending data related to their mistakes. I did have plans of reading something else a little more interesting rather than the ‘Great Depression’. Pictures of all those homeless people standing in the breadlines that went around for blocks added to the mood of the evening which was….quite ironically…depressing!!! Alas, the Americans are back to their dirty tricks again, and some poor chap is going to be spending late hours into the night a decade from now, obliging the idiosyncrasies of some economics professor….and why? Because the world’s so called super-power could not read between the lines…..Alas poor lamb of the future, be warned…we shall but suffer from acute sleep deprivation owing to the sins of our fathers...i mean bankers.
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