Economics Rap Video: Bling bling!!

Ok - so even if you're not really interested in Economics, check out the video below.  Its pretty funny. 

I'm an economics nerd, and I follow the blogs of two fairly 'famous' economists - Greg Mankiw (of Harvard) and Mark Perry (of UMichigan - Flint).  Here is a rap video that was posted on Perry's blog.  Hilarious, informative, biting and witty all at the same time.

The video pits two economists against each other - each who have had a distinct influence on how Republicans (who favor a Hayek point of view) and Democrats (who favor Keynes) perceive the best way to deal with a recession such at the one that the US and World has just gone through.*

Keynes:  tends to favor government spending in order to fix the economy.  His solution:  people are not buying enough to support producers.  If producers aren't supported, they fire people, raising unemployment, who then buy less, causing layoffs, which leads to unemployment, and so on and so forth.  His solution says that government should spend money until spending increases again.

Hayek: tends to favor little government regulation of the economy.  Instead, the problem is the the economy starts growing too fast and gets ahead of itself.  Eventually it hasn't grown enough at the core to support itself and collapses.  This problem can be rectified if the government merely raises or lowers interest rates to encourage growth when the economy slows or raise interest rates to discourage growth when it may start overheating.



Some witty/interesting things from the video itself

• When Hayek (bald guy) walks into his hotel room at the beginning and looks in the drawer, the book is not a Gideon Bible (as many hotels have), but a book by Keynes.  The insinuation?  Many economists see Keynes work as "the bible" of economic theories - the theory on which everything else is based.  
• As Keynes is rapping, he is drinking a lot.  He later becomes drunk and hung over.  It seems that too much of a good thing (bailout money?) might be destructive in the end.  The overall setting of the video was creatively done and the creators seem to favor Hayek.  
• The bar tenders who are giving Keynes his alcohol that eventually causes him to collapse and throw up are named "Tim" and "Ben".   These are thinly veiled references to Timothy Geitner (Treasury Secretary) and Ben Bernanke (Federal Reserve Chairman) and the fact that they were the ones who may have overloaded the economy with too much bailout money.  

So there you have it.  Economics is cool.  And so am I.

*Yes, I speak in the past tense.  Though it may not be felt in all sectors of all economies, in general, indicators from various sources seem to show that the economy has pulled out of a recession and is heading into recovery.  See support for that here.  Scroll down to posts on the end of the recession.