Friday, February 20, 2004

Economics in One Lesson?

'I blagged my way through, reading a torn-up textbook and ad libbing'

Matthew Richardson claims to know "next to nothing" about economics but, flew off to China anyway to deliver a series of lectures on global economics.

Richardson, borrowing an A-level textbook by Stephen Valdez entitled An Introduction to Global Financial Markets from a library, he felt he could "carry it off".

All went well during the first afternoon. Then, the next day he made it to the lunch break.

"The problem was that I was running out of chapters. By mid-afternoon on the second day I was already on chapter 15 of 16 and I still had the rest of the day and the following morning to go. I realised I wasn't going to make it."

It was then he decided to hightail it out of there. "I didn't like to tell them I didn't know what I was talking about. So I decided to leg it."

Read the UK Telegraph Story on the Oxford Engineering Student and Sometime Economist