Yoram Bauman on 'The Cartoon Introduction to Economics'

I've been feeling discombobulated by the economy of late -- that gut-churning feeling never ends. How is it that free-spending Greeks can depress the balance of my kids' college fund? What nasty surprises are afoot in the capitols of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain)? OMG, maybe it's time to bring back the barter system.

In need of insight, not to mention a laugh, I called up Yoram Bauman, the world's only stand-up economist, co-author of "The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume Two: Macroeconomics" (Hill & Wang, $17.95).

Seattle resident Bauman got his start by writing a parody of a well-known economics book. He honed his gags with stand-up routines at Seattle's Comedy Underground. Then he teamed up with Grady Klein, a terrific cartoonist, and the rest is history (the history of cartoon economics books, anyway). Their first collaboration, "The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume One: Microeconomics," has been translated into nine languages. Publishers Weekly called Volume Two "clever, lucid, and lighthearted."

Bauman tried to make me feel better, but he seemed a wee bit worried himself.

Wow. Not a lot [funnier]. The economic situation is pretty grim. You have folks like Paul Krugman who say that austerity is terrible. Others say that it's more of a structural issue, that we have this mismatch between the jobs employers have and the skills needed by workers to fill those jobs.

What's going on in Greece won't impact the U.S. as much as it impacts Europe. Europe is an export market for the U.S., so the situation does affect the ability of U.S. businesses to sell products there.

My impression is that U.S. banks do not have a lot of ties to Europe, but if those dominoes start falling, you have to worry about where they are going to lead. We live in a global economic community. If you have any of the big players that really start to suffer, there's going to be follow-up.

There's a panel in the cartoon book where you have a robot driver, and the woman in the backseat of the car says, look at all these people who can't find jobs! The robot says, yes, ma'am, that's a tragedy.

Seriously -- there's no law that says everybody's going to get a job, but the track record has been pretty good. You look at all the changes that have happened over the last century, the economy still seems to be pretty good at putting people to work.

It's getting a lot of press, and a lot of people claim to be worried about it. That's good, I think.

If you look at the U.S. national debt like it's a percentage of gross domestic product, it's in "cautious" territory. It's not like 200 percent of GDP, like Greece. It's more like 80 percent of GDP. It's not where you want to be, but it's not a Greece-style disaster.

It's the implicit debt , such as the promises we've made in the areas of Social Security and Medicare. It swamps the other kinds of debt. The Republicans spend a lot of time talking about debt, then they run ads about how Democrats want to cut Medicare. Every time either side tries to do anything about Medicare, the other side just bashes them over the head with it. That gives me more pause for concern.

In economics we have to take our humor where we can get it.