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The Catch That Saved the U.S. Economy

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Those who read this post a couple of days ago will be aware that the fate of the U.S. economy was riding on the outcome of yesterday’s Super Bowl game. Fortunately, God watches over small children, dumb animals, and the USA.

Posted by Lee Sigelman on February 4, 2008 09:05 AM |

Comments

TheOneEyedMan has just posted a comment to my original Super Bowl post (linked above). I have two responses:

(1) Don't you just love it when economists talk dirty?

(2) So far today, the Dow is down. I don't think that's consistent with either TheOneEyedMan's or Phil's rational expectations-based speculation.

Posted by: Lee Sigelman | February 4, 2008 11:09 AM

I love this post. BTW I am a GWU alumni, myself graduated 1995. Veronica

Posted by: veronicaromm | February 4, 2008 12:15 PM

Um, Lee, you repeated yourself in that last sentence.

Despite a little searching today, I still haven't been able to find out whether betting favored the Pats or Giants (either straight up or against the 12-point spread). However, I would guess that Vegas took a bath yesterday. Since they were expecting a handle of 100 million, let's figure that we might have netted the economy a $50 million dollar boost (at the expense of casino owners, who are doing just fine, thank you very much), akin to the "stimulus" being proposed, but smaller in scale.

Of course, if you expect that $50 million to effect the economy, I've got a lovely bridge to sell you.

Posted by: Matt Jarvis | February 4, 2008 05:03 PM

I guess if you believe in the correlation between different statistics, such as the Dow and Super Bowl winners, this means that you should also believe that the 'Skins will win the Super Bowl in 2009--every previous time the Giants have won the Super Bowl (1987, 1991), the 'Skins won it the following year.

Then again, it could just be spurious...

Posted by: Phil | February 5, 2008 06:28 PM

In your dreams, Phil. I put the Washington Team's (I won't use their racist name) chances of winning the Super Bowl in 2009 only slightly above my own chances of winning the Tour de France.

Posted by: Lee Sigelman | February 6, 2008 08:53 AM

My point exactly.

Posted by: Phil | February 6, 2008 10:05 AM