Dispossesed

Couple of old jokes, one new to me, that are appropos to our times:

Did you hear about the guy who fell behind on the payments to his exorcist?
He was repossesed.

And from Krugman, on Geithner's financial rescue plan, the "old" joke I had never heard before:

What do you get when you cross the Godfather with a deconstructionist?
Someone who makes you an offer you can’t understand.

Part of what I enjoy about reading Krugman's writing, in addition to the fact that he has, during the ten years or so since I started reading his pieces at Slate, accumulated a uncannily accurate track record on his predictions, and in addition to his ability to write at a level and information density that I can grasp, is his dry wit and humor. He follows the above post with a matching cartoon. And in an earlier post, titled "Acronyms," he relates, "But Jamie Galbraith (private communication) has trumped me; he says it’s the Bad Assets Relief Fund."

So my point is, even the Nobel-winning economist seems to think our last, best hope to get through this mess is to develop a sense of humor.

Followup: to get at the list of Krugman's articles at Slate, follow the link to that page, which will take you to a search for "Paul Krugman." Then in the author column, click on his name for a listing of his articles there. That's the link I tried to embed, but it takes me back to the first search page. And to clarify, Krugman quit writing a regular column for Slate when he picked up his column at the NYT.