Dear Austan Goolsbee,
Congratulations on your pending appointment as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors! I realize that these are difficult economic times, and you have your work cut out for you, and I wanted to offer my insight to help you get the American economy rolling again.
Federal receipts are about $2.5 trillion, and our spending stands at about $3.5 trillion. Our national debt is above $12 trillion and growing. These are grave problems, for sure. But I’ve got good news: I’ve found a way out of this predicament. Work those phones, borrow ten trillion, and lay it on Pac 10 senior quarterbacks in Las Vegas.
Crazy? Hardly. Had those stodgy, stick-in-the-mud banking nerds that preceded you done this in the last three years, the US economy would be the envy of the world. Behold the annual returns for a $10 trillion investment in 2007, rolled over year after year:
2007: +59%, $15.9 trillion
2008: +19%, $18.92 trillion
2009: +16%, $21.95 trillion
…that’s a return of more than 100%, padding our federal budget with $12 trillion in fresh, sweet dollars, reversing our deficits and eliminating our debt. Yeah, you have to pay some financing costs for the original loan, but, hey, I don’t need to tell the White House Council of Economic Advisors that! (Remember–you probably won’t even dip halfway into that $10 trillion to get started, and we’d only need to carry a loan for a few months.)
How does this work, exactly? It’s not hard: All you do is bet a trillion every time a senior Pac 10 quarterback plays. You might lose one or two weeks, but by the time the bowl games are over we’re going to be rolling in guns and butter. So here you go–just keep betting on every game played by University of Washington and UC Berkeley, so long as their veteran senior quarterbacks Jake Locker and Kevin Riley stay upright.
Enjoy your new job, and thanks for your time.
Sincerely–
Adam
Ground Rules: $10 trillion available, betting $1.1 trillion each game (that’s $1 trillion and a $100 billion ‘vig’)
Week 1: UW vs BYU, BYU by 3: BYU wins by 6. LOSS.
Rolling total: $8.9 trillion
Week 1: Cal vs UCD, Cal by 37: Cal wins by 49. WIN.
Rolling total: $9.9 trillion
Week 2: UW vs Syr, UW by 12: UW wins by 21. WIN.
Rolling total: $10.9 trillion
Week 2: Cal vs Colo, Cal by 10.5: Cal wins by 45. WIN.
Rolling total: $11.9 trillion
Week 3: UW vs Neb, Neb by 3: Nebraska wins by about 50. LOSS.
Rolling total: $10.8 trillion
Week 3: Cal vs Nev, Cal by 2.5: Nevada wins by about 50. LOSS.
Rolling total: $9.7 trillion
Week 4: UW bye.
Week 4: Cal vs. Arizona, Arizona by 6.5. Cal covers, losing by 1. WIN
Rolling total: $10.7 trillion.
Week 5: UW vs USC, USC by 10; UW wins by 1. WIN.
Rolling total: $11.7 trillion
Week 5: Cal bye.
Week 6: UW vs ASU, UW by 2.5. UW loses by 10. LOSE.
Rolling total: $10.6 trillion
Week 6: Cal vs UCLA, Cal by 7.5. Cal wins by 28. WIN.
Rolling total: $11.6 trillion
Week 7: UW vs OSU, UW by 1.5. UW wins by 1. LOSE.
Rolling total: $10.5 trillion
Week 7: Cal vs USC, USC by 2. Cal loses by 40 or so. LOSE.
Rolling total: $9.4 trillion
Week 8: UW vs Arizona, Arizona by 6. Arizona wins by 30. LOSE.
Rolling total: $8.3 trillion
Week 8: Cal vs ASU, Cal by 3. Cal wins by 33. WIN.
Rolling total: $9.3 trillion
Week 9: UW vs Stanford, Stanford by 7. Stanford wins by 41. LOSE.
Rolling total: $8.2 trillion
Week 9: Cal vs OSU, OSU by 2. OSU wins by 28. LOSE.
(RILEY knocked out for the season)
Rolling total: $7.1 trillion
Week 10: NO SR QBs start (Locker out vs Oregon)
Week 11: UW vs UCLA, UW by 2.5. TBD.
UW covers against UCLA
Week 12: UW vs Cal, TBD.
UW covers against Cal.
Week 13: UW vs WSU, TBD.
UW covers against WSU
Bowl Game: UW vs Nebraska
UW covers against Nebraska
Final total: $11.1 trillion!!
September 17, 2010 at 7:18 am |
Hmm, that makes no sense.
Are you saying the professional oddsmakers — who presumably by this point have Moneyball/Bloomberg-level banks of supercomputers to cross-tabulate every variable available to the public — consistently undervalue this effect, even though it is so well known that it has been codified in the Iron Law of Pac-10 Football?
In that case, can I ride on the overstuffed, Diddy-style yacht that you buy next spring, after taking out a second mortgage on your house and snowballing it into a billion damn dollars?
If this is “The Hangover,” you are officially our Alan. Congratulations. (And please keep at least 500 feet away from the public schools.)
September 17, 2010 at 3:35 pm |
Well, first, I haven’t seen the Hangover. Saw the A-Team. Same basic thing?
Second, Vegas doesn’t make money by getting the score right, they make money by getting half of the population on each side of the bet. So they’re not undervaluing the effect; they’re agnostic about it. If everyone knew about the Iron Law, they’d move their numbers; but, miraculously, some don’t.
Third, just for fun I checked 2006 earlier today and found a return of -22% using my System. I would magically turn $1 trillion into a cool $780 billion! Isaiah Stanback, Matt Moore, and Trent Edwards were all seniors, and two of them went down mid-season, losing against the spread in those games. So there might be a problem with the system. But I doubt it.
September 17, 2010 at 3:49 pm |
That’s the trouble with gambling. You can make all this money — but it’s risky. That’s why I’m still using Internet Explorer 6. Safely tried and true.
(Note that this is an Internet joke and thus you are not supposed to get it, since you live in a cave and still eat things that end in -osaurus, though actually you live in Seattle so that may mean regularly slaying and filleting the mighty Tofuosaurus, which now that I’ve written it down looks itself like the name of a UW fullback, so hey.)
Wait, what?
Someone said ESPN projected the Ducks to win 1,000 to 3 tomorrow. My first thought was, yeah, right, like they’re going to get a field goal against our defense. My second thought was about Icarus.
September 17, 2010 at 3:58 pm |
Also, you should probably cancel your evening plans, keep the kids busy (late-night scavenger hunt, go!), and watch “The Hangover.” It’s all sorts of wrong (frat boyish, prone to cheap gags, insufficiently interested in women as human beings rather than plot props, randomly populated with chickens), but it’s also really, really funny.
September 5, 2011 at 9:46 pm |
Hey! Hey, it worked! After week 9 last year, down millions of dollars and with only Jake Locker left, I figured it was a lost cause. But check it out:
Week 10: favored by 2 vs UCLA–win by 17.
Rolling total: $8.1 trillion
Week 11: favored to lose by 7.5 at Cal–win by 3.
Rolling total: $9.1 trillion.
Week 12: favored to win by 5.5 vs WSU–win by 7.
Rolling total: $10.1 trillion
Bowl game: favored to lose by 13 vs Nebraska–win by 12.
Rolling total: $11.1 trillion
That’s an 11% ROI, Mr. Goolsbee, in just five months. That is $1.1 trillion to plug into a sweet jobs program (cable bridges, maybe?), deficit reduction, laser-rays–whatever!