Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Heaton.

OK, I messed up on today's episode.

I'm sorry, I messed up. Here's the thing. I was in New York

recently for very legal, very above-board purposes and I hit up my good friend Jean Epstein for lunch. We got talking and

catching up all that stuff and I said, Jean, let's hang out some more while I'm in

town. How about's tomorrow? I swing by your office and we bang out a bonus

episode and Jean said can't just hang out with me for the sake of hanging out with me we can't

just have lunches friends. Can't just

socialize without it turning into your job. To which I replied, Gene, you are my economics

mentor. I should think you would appreciate that I'm maximizing the

efficiency of my time by hanging out with you socially and adding an additional

layer of labor on top of that, thereby utilizing the same period to achieve a higher level of both emotional and economic utility.

I mean, do you really want me to toss out all the economics you taught me right out the window?

Because we can do that, Jean, we can go to a diner and have pretty much the same discussion

without either of us making a buck off of it and just have a less productive

conversation thwarting all that economics you taught me if that's what you want.

So Jean graciously relented and we agreed to meet at his office to do a bonus episode.

And that's where I screwed up.

Gene Epstein is the former economics editor for Barron's magazine.

Before that, he was senior economist at the New York Stock Exchange,

and for a little while he taught economics at Cuny.

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