"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honore de Balzac

***

Quotes:

[Me: Women are attracted to jerks] I'm not attracted to you.

[On being ugly] People used to throw things at me.

[Year 3 student:] I look worse and worse every sem. [Me: So you must have looked fabulous when you entered NUS.]

[Me on someone's jacket: You something something, let's hug.] Maybe it's 'You bastard, let's hug'.

Look up Alpha Chiang if you're not clear about that. My favourite book.

I love business. It's all about exploiting people... My degree is the best. Finance. You risk money, but it's not your money. It's other people's.

[On the prata sausage roll] It's damn expensive, for something that isn't even as thick as my dick. [Me: At least it's more tasty] My dick isn't flaking.

[On Romancing Singapore] We are making a funny claim that romance leads to sex. That sex needs a - lubricant.

[On creating new consumers, producers and defence forces for the warfare state] When you have sex, you're not thinking: 'Ooh, by doing this I'm populating the world'

[On Romancing Singapore] Working harder leaves less time for human relations.

[On pornography] It masquerades as art, like Crazy Horse, so it satisfies our 'artistic sensibilities'.

It's a dis-utopia (dystopia)

How do you show that consumption smoothing is better than - *student raises hand* I haven't even asked the question yet.

I begin to suspect that when I go to Indonesia, calamities follow... Before or after... After I left... earthquake... Before I boarded the plane - Garuda plane crash.

I started off as a young Marxist in my university days, but I thought that class struggle quickly has diminishing marginal returns as a way of looking at things... I threw all the conspiracy theories out of the window. I still keep some, from time to time.

[On a picture of a Filipino slum] Oh, that's where I lve. [Student: That's why you come here.] Yeah.

I own some property in London. Unit trusts... I own probably one staircase.

What do economists debate about nowadays? [Me: Mathematics]... [Ronald Coase said:] When economists want to study a problem, when economists want to study a camel, they sit in the office and draw some equations. They can just go to their next door neighbor and look at the camel... Ronald Coase never did mathematics.

The chief economist of the IMF is from the University of Chicago. And guess what? He says yes to regulations.

[On the value of trademarks] If a bag is Cartier it's worth $200, even if it's made in China... If it's *his name* - worthless, even if it's the same.

[On tax evasion in the US] $1 - the IRS will let you go. $2 - they will trace you... You cannot leave the US. *Toot toot toot* 'This person has not paid the tax'

[Me on zaogeng-ing: Later the one who'll be standing here is not me but ***] He already cannot teach, don't distract him further. [Student 2: Maybe if you distract him he'll teach better.]

Compared to him, even *** is ok. His notes are okay. You can't understand what he's teaching but at least you know what he's trying to teach.

In Applied Theory, we sometimes have strange findings. We found the cost function - it was decreasing. Something must be wrong [Ed: Maybe with the theory of decreasing costs]

[On exogenous variables] Exogenous - minimum price, minimum age in Singapore

[On a symmetric semi-definite matrix representing the cost function] You know Paul Samuelson... He said there were some mathematical things which can't be explained. This is one of them.

[On pirating textbooks] First guy incurs cost. It will cost him 20 minutes. Maybe half an hour. Then the second guy will come, his cost will be 0... It's like an [market] entry. First guy incurs cost.

[On economic analysis] Maybe not very meaningful, but people in institutions, they like these graphs.

It's a bit of mags (maths)