People always ask me if I'm afraid of bombing when I do stand-up comedy like I afraid of failure and I always feel like I have to remind them that I teach introductory micro-accompanies at 8 o'clock in the morning. Surely before the election I'm doing gig in Wichita and I have a woman who joined me at the dinner table there and the first thing basically out of her mouth after I sat down when she said that if Obama was a elected president she was afraid that in five years she would be wearing a burka. So after the election I sent her a catalog. I sent her a note and the note said I'm not trying to rub it in but the economy needs you to buy a burka. Jay Leno says that anybody can become a professional comedian if they give it seven years. I'm one year number four. That means that I'm ABD. So for any graduate who has any died that means that I get to spend the next three years sucking up to older comedians who aren't as funny as I am. After those last couple of jokes this would be an opportune time to thank the folks at the American Economic Association for sponsoring this. Some of us have actually tried to get a humor session going at the AEA for a couple of years now and the sessions kept getting rejected and finally I got so upset that I started writing a rap song about getting gist by the AEA. Fortunately the session was accepted this year before I got much farther than the chorus which included the refrain. Thanks but no thank you. We'd rather listen to N Gregory Matthew. I don't bond very often. I did have the pleasure of bombing a few weeks ago. It was for a show for some bankers. I really didn't do very well at this particular show and I did so poorly in fact that I spent a fair amount of time kind of soul searching afterwards trying to figure out what had gone wrong in my act. I eventually decided that the problem was in my opening line which was hey how's it going? Let me say a little bit about the financial crisis. You know what this I'm an economist. But if you have this experience I'm sure people keep asking you to comment on the financial crisis. This is hard for me because I'm an environmental economist. Asking me about macrologues is like asking someone who works at a bank how to make money. That last punchline actually tells the history of the financial crisis. When I came up with that joke about 12 months ago the joke on like this asking me about macro economics is like asking someone who works at a Wall Street investment bank how to make money in the long run. About six months ago I realized that I can shorten it. It just became asking me about macro economics is like asking someone who works at a Wall Street investment bank how to make money. Then it became like asking someone at a bank how to make money. And my real concern is in two months it's just going to be it's like asking someone how to make money. If I had to pick up the money I described the US economy right now I'd have to go with the hamster but like a really tired hamster that's been running around its cage for like seven years. I'm not exhausted. As a micro economist I would say that the hamster needs some rest. macro economists of course look at the hamster and think that it needs some methamphetamines. I'm sure that they're right over the past month I've learned that the three most terrifying words in the English language are macro economists agree that. I'm sure they're right about the hamster needing methamphetamines but all I'm saying is that in two years that is going to be one ugly hamster. One of the challenges of being an economist comedian is that it's very difficult to find places to practice. Some of these new jokes that I tell you tonight for instance I've only done once before and that was two hours ago on an interview with the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lerner. It's like they interviewed Kevin Erro they interviewed Joe Stiglitz and they interviewed me. I feel like kind of a self-aware version of Sarah Paylon. We have to slow down we have to speed up. A paradox you might say no wonder it's so difficult to know how long it will take to resolve. On our website you can hear more of Paul's conversation with the standup economist. It's all for details about my new book more comedy videos and information about upcoming shows visit standupeconomist.com