Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman yesterday successfully drew a line onto an Excel spreadsheet, before copying that same line onto a Powerpoint slide.
People are now worried.
A small subset of the people is worried because they believe the line symbolizes the sadness and anger of a powerful metaphysical force, which they also believe to be behind the appearance of similar lines throughout history. These people have warned that if any more similar lines appear in the near future, they will cease the movement of sequences of binary numbers between large grey boxes. The larger grouping of people is worried that if the binary numbers cease moving, there will be no more small green pieces of paper for them. All of the people agree that the line is Important.
Speaking to The Twice-a-Weekly moments after drawing the Important Line, Krugman advised people to look very closely at “all of the line,” before attempting “the difficult task” of interpreting its meaning.
“As you can see,” said Krugman while pointing to the start of the line, “the line first moves from the bottom of the screen to the top in a sort of diagonal way. In Economics, we say that the line ‘ascends.’”
“But then, and this is the really important bit,” said Krugman, “the line starts to go down – it starts to ‘descend’.”
According to Krugman, it is this ‘descending’ that signals the line’s importance.
“At this point,” said Krugman, pointing to the highest part of the line, “we want the line to continue to ‘ascend.’ But, as I have already taught you, this line then ‘descends.’ The line does not keep ‘ascending.’ This is important.”
Many people, including all of the Important White Men, agree with and understand Krugman.
Charles McMaths, President of the Society of Important White Men (SoIWM), contacted The Twice-a-Weekly to stress the importance of the Important Line.
“We do not know the full magnitude of the force that lies behind this line,” said McMaths. “But we must appease it.”
According to McMaths, the SoIWM has exclusive access to ancient lore, passed down through generations of SoIWM members, that explains how to appease the power and make the line ‘ascend’ once more.
“It all comes down to stopping the movement of the numbers,” said McMaths. “Actually, this lore is several generations old, so it technically only mentions the movement of small circular pieces of metal, and also shells, and pieces of wheat. But we extended the principle to all of the numbers. If ever any member of the SoIWM comes across a bad Important Line, we change the numbers, whatever they may be – that is what the lore requires.”
Critics of the line argue that the Important Men have forgotten why they are drawing lines.
“It used to be that we were expected to learn not only how to draw the lines, but why we were drawing certain lines, and not others,” said an old Marxist Economist who refused to be named because names are just the means through which the Bourgeoisie interpellates members of the proletariat as its subjects. “But now its all drawing, no asking,” he said.
Elsewhere, U2 Management student Jean-Paul LeBriggs pointed to the line during a seminar and was congratulated. LeBriggs told The Twice-a-Weekly he had been practicing by pointing to the menu in Gert’s all year.
“I expect a fulfilling life of pointing at graphs ahead of me,” LeBriggs said.