About a week ago, I met up with a couple of friends who took Economics during their A-Levels stint. A few drinks later, we ran out of topics to discuss, having already talked about our target universities, the courses and other ‘general’ matters (girlfriend-boyfriend things), so we accidentally came up with a nonsensical joke about economics in the market. If there was someone to blame, it has to be me, having started the topic which ended as a really crappy gauge of our economic knowledge. Anyway, here’s how the joke went.
It started out as a kind of news statement; I asked them if they heard of the incident in the Damansara market, where this fishmonger was arrested by the AH MA (Anti-hedging of Morning-Market Associations) for illegally hedging his supply of tuna. Since oil prices were high, people were getting hungrier, and global warming has caused many tunas to be medium-rare when fished, prices of tunas have shot up three-fold, so this good fellow decided to hedge these tunas in advance to his loyal customers. Indeed, they paid a higher price for the meat, but they didn’t mind, as long as the tunas kept coming.
Our crapping frenzy started, and soon, ‘news’ of short selling of pork in a market in Desa has been being banned has emerged. Prices of pork had risen to hundreds lately, and farmers are desperate to short sell them to maintain a high demand for it. The local ARSE (Association for Regulating Short-selling Entity) received complains from local customers who missed out of the fun of short selling, and pork selling short when they got to know of it.
In as separate case, a swindler, known as Tan Mad-Off of Puchong market, had cheated thousands of their life savings for buying chickens that never existed. Local authorities, AH PA (Anti Haggling Ponzi Association) called it a “highly-organised Ponzi scheme of chicken feet and salted eggs”, but declined to comment further.
A spin-off of beef also occurred in Subang, where increase in prices of beef forced its derivatives to rise as well. Beef has got so expensive that bull riding is a rarity nowadays, donkey is the new cow, and Disney replaced Connie the Cow with Donald as cost-cutting measures. Local municipal councils are closely monitoring beef prices to prevent foreclosure of less competitive farmers, as well as to ensure the NCR (National Cow Reserves) remain at an optimum level in case of any spike in demand i.e. dinnertime.
Finally, courtesy of a friend who never fail to fail Econs (just kidding!!), he gladly informed us that the Fish and Chips Index reaching all time high. The FTSE (Fish and Tuna Stock Exchange) remains stable, but the KLCI (Kuala Lumpur Chicken Index) fell by a few points, and a whole lot of feathers.
It was a joke, a lousy one. And this was my afternoon gone. I couldn’t think of a worse afternoon.
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