A practitioner of a form of voodoo known as the “dismal science.”
“What is the appropriate punishment for financial swindling, a white-collar crime? As an economist, I am not qualified to discuss such an issue. However, I cannot forebear from calling attention to one punishment suggested, or at least mentioned, three times. At the time of the South Sea bubble, one member of the House of Commons, Molesworth, in a speech that Carswell says was thought absurd at the time, considered that Parliament should declare the directors of the South Sea Company guilty of parricide and subject them to the ancient Roman punishment for that transgression—to be sewn into sacks, each with a monkey and a snake, and drowned.”
Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes (1989).
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