Hummingbird Economics

Biff has been fixated with hummingbirds since he was five years old. He has written many books and articles on the care and feeding of nature’s most important bird.

Unfortunately none have ever been published.

Amazingly, hummingbirds don’t seem to be a priority for most people. So Biff never received the recognition that his brother Ben receives.

Biff used an inheritance to purchase a 1000 acre valley in upstate Vermont. The parcel has always been known as Honeysuckle Valley. He bought the property to be closer to his birds and to distance himself from Princeton and the success of his brother.

Biff like his brother Ben has always been focused on improving his environment, so he started placing honeypots out in the open to lure more hummingbirds to his property.

Over the years Biff began noticing a change in the hummingbirds. They seemed to be growing in size so it was obvious that his honey was helping the birds. The only puzzlement was that the extra bulk seemed to make the hummers less nimble in escaping the advances of their predators, the hawks.

Biff thought about this constantly. He remembered his brother talking about disequilibrium in an economy. Could this be the same?

He called his brother Ben and asked for help. Ben explained his theory about stimulating slow moving economies with more money. So together they surmised that it made sense to stimulate the slow moving hummingbirds with more honey.

Biff started his own version of Economic Stimulus for his hummingbirds. This seemingly small event turned into a watershed moment in economic history.

As Biff provided more and more stimulus for the hummingbirds an amazing equilibrium came about that no one could have predicted.

Like the hummingbirds, the bears have learned to use Biff’s stimulus. The bears now stay by the honeypots constantly waiting for honey. The slow moving hummingbirds have also learned to stay by the honeypots to utilize the benevolent bears as protection from the hawks. Continuous economic stimulus has created a new higher standard of living in Honeysuckle Valley for the hummingbirds and the bears.

Many years ago economic philosophers such as Plato and Jefferson suggested that a government that chooses “winners” and “losers” in a society would always end in corruption.

Then Keynes and Friedman postulated that small amounts of “temporary” stimulus during economic downturns could bring positive overall benefits to an economy provided the government manipulation was reversed after the recession ended.

Biff with the help of his brother Ben provided the research that has allowed government economists to take the final step away from our inefficient free markets and toward the inevitable “managed economy”. The findings in Honeysuckle Valley have proved that constant stimulus by a benevolent third party can increase the standard of living of all participants equally.

(It must be noted that the brothers decided that the hawks did not merit being a variable in their study because the pesky creatures left the valley and moved to New Hampshire midway through their research.)

Economists from all over the world now come to Honeysuckle Valley to study the first documented case which proves that continuous and unlimited economic stimulation can create a higher standard of living for everyone. This new theory is presently being utilized in Japan, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and of course here in the United States by Biff’s brother Ben.

Biff is rich and famous and is getting the recognition that he deserves.

There is only one thing that bothers Biff now.

He hates the first question that comes from all new visitors to Honeysuckle Valley:

“What in the heck is that Smell?”