H.L. Mencken Call Your Office

H.L Mencken once defined Puritan reformers as those who have "a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun."

You can find of a lot of these busy bodies on college campuses. The latest is a University of Iowa professor who looks down on the fact that money is being waged on whether Lloyd Blankfein will survive the year as CEO at Goldman Sachs.

NYT found the prude:

Betting on Goldman isn’t much different, said George R. Neumann, a University of Iowa professor of economics who in 1988 invented the Iowa Political Stock Market, the predecessor to the still-popular Iowa Electronic Markets.

Professor Neumann’s online futures market serves primarily as a teaching tool, while Intrade is a profit-making exchange that charges 5 cents a contract.

“I don’t know what the economic gain is,” Professor Neumann said of the betting on Goldman, “and it’s in bad taste.”

Puhleezee. As taxpayers, we coughed over billions to the scamming Goldman, at least we can have a little fun betting on his deaprture from Goldman. And the economic gain is huge psychic gain, something that wound up types like Neumann never consider because it doesn't fit into their uptight equations.