Florida Marlins pitcher Burke Badenhop:
A spring training clubhouse might be the unlikeliest setting for an economics forum - until Marlins pitcher Burke Badenhop is asked for his thoughts on the world's financial crisis.
"The housing crisis obviously caused it. You have to fix that. But it's also a case of creating jobs,'' he said. "Just dumping a bunch of money into Ford and GM, I didn't think, made a lot of sense because they're going to keep making the same stuff.''
The right-hander is just getting warmed up. "I've got no problems giving out tax money,'' he continues, "as long
as it's earmarked to the right places. That's what the economy is -
allocating proper capital to people who need it, people who are going
to make it double, triple ...''
That's beautiful!
What in the name of Alan Greenspan does this 26-year-old pitcher
know about capital asset ratio, microfinancing and product
differentiation? "Not much,'' he said with a laugh. But he knows plenty more than most baseball players. Badenhop
graduated from Ohio's Bowling Green State University in 2005 with an
economics degree and a 3.94 GPA. "He took four classes from me and got all A's, and some were tough
upper-level courses,'' said BGSU economics professor Timothy Fuerst,
whom Badenhop credits with sparking his interest in the subject during
his freshman year. "One class was on the Great Depression, which is
pretty appropriate now.'' Badenhop wrote a term paper on sports economics. "One issue was
whether it makes sense to use state money for new stadiums, and I
remember Burke was skeptical about using public money,'' Fuerst said
with a laugh. "You better not tell that to his employers!''
HT to JC.