Saturday, August 12, 2006

Finance, Literature, Science, History, and more

This is good! Using non finance examples to get finance across.

From Reuters:
"Economics may be called the dismal science, but that doesn't mean that anyone who writes about it or its sibling, investment, has to be dull.

How about '60s rockers Crosby, Stills & Nash to illustrate the need for a rebalancing of global financial fundamentals?

Or a population explosion among jellyfish off the coast of Namibia as a proxy for institutional investors fleeing risk?

Maybe, if you are a history buff, you would prefer linking a major U.S. civil war battle to the renewed rise of yields on 10-year government debt?"

for instance:

"The U.S. Civil War Battle of Bull Run ... took place in July, the Pamplona bull run takes place in July and the bond markets have had their own July bull run," investment bank Calyon noted recently.

or

"Analysts also regularly try for a bit of color or humor in their daily market reports.

On Bastille Day, July 14, for example, Kit Juckes, Royal Bank of Scotland's head of bond and currency strategy, said investors should expect a tough day for stocks and bonds but a better one for the dollar.

But he only got there after first treating readers to the entire first verse of France's national anthem."


Gee, making finance fun, how original ;) .

Of course it does have a academic basis as well. For instance Rodney Paul and I once wrote a paper about teaching finance using football. Not only do these non traditional examples stand out, they are also fun AND they help people without strong finance backgrounds understand what is happening.


Thanks to Rich (yes that Rich) for the headsup on this one!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Every intriguing teaching technique, regardless of the domain, makes people at least smile. But the most important thing is to make people understand what is about.

Anonymous said...

Humor is the only thing that can make economics tolerable to me. otherwise, i would not even come near to economics!!