INTRODUCING....

Experienced economist and not so experienced economist are walking down the road.

They come across a pile of horse manure lying on the asphalt.

Experienced economist: "If you eat it I'll give you $20,000!"

Not so experienced economist runs his optimization problem and figures out he's better off eating it so he does and collects money.

Continuing along the same road they come across another pile of horse manure.

Not so experienced economist: "Now, if YOU eat this I’ll give YOU $20,000."

After evaluating the proposal experienced economist eats it and collects the money.

They go on. The not so experienced economist starts thinking: "Listen, we both have the same amount of money we had before, but we both ate horse manure. I don't see us being better off."

The experienced economist replies "Well, that's true, but you overlooked the fact that we've been just involved in $40,000 of trade."

GUEST DISCUSSION QUESTION (FABRICE TOURE C. F. A$$hole)--Who collected a nice fee on both manure trades?

CLUE: The Financial Swindling Authority (FSA) has fined Goldman Sachs £20m after the investment bank failed to tell the regulator a member of staff [Guess Who] at the centre of fraud charges in the US was working in the UK. Goldman agreed to pay the fine, one of the heaviest levied by the FSA, after it admitted it made a mistake when it failed to keep the UK regulator informed of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York.

ANSWER TO DISCUSSION QUESTION: The FSA