Economics for Everyone

JUNE 1 2008: Nick van Praet at the Financial Post, a very fair reporter even if he does work for a right-wing rag, penned a generous profile of yours truly as a follow-up to our recent round of major auto bargaining with the Big Three.

Here's the link:

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=549743

Apart from a near-full-body photo (I should have jutted my chin out further, don't you think?), the most noteworthy aspects of the article were:

1. The headline called me "Jimbo" (which is how my friends and family call me); and
2. He described me as looking like a disgruntled surfer, reluctantly holding down a day job.

Yep, that's me: surfer dude economist.

Postscript to the Jimbo moniker: My friend Eric Pineault, a very good leftie financial economist at UQAM in Montreal, actually named (in published research) a statistical measure of financialization the "Jimbo index" -- referring to a graph in my 1999 book Paper Boom which showed the rising ratio of financial assets to real assets in Canada.  (The same graph appears for the U.S. economy on p. 220 of e4e.)

I guess it's a good thing my nickname isn't "snugglepuss" or "puffboy" or something like that.  It wouldn't sound nearly as impressive in empirical application.