2010-04-23

A man with glasses and reddish hair gestures emphatically while ranting: "And Judas failed to deposit that 30 pieces of silver, which at a 1% compound interest rate would now be worth 13.2 billion pieces of silver!" Beside him, a dismayed man holding a book marked with a cross tries to redirect: "...Right... but the point of the story is -" The first man cuts him off, shouting: "History's greatest monster!" A caption below reads: "Economists are no longer allowed on 'BibleTalk.'" In the votey (black-and-white close-up of the bespectacled man), he continues: "And with a wave of his hand, Jesus calculated M3 perfectly for all the nations of the world." The joke: an economist hijacks a Bible discussion, reframing scripture entirely through finance (compound interest, the M3 money supply).