No, not of the Groceries variety, but of the mask and cape variety. More specifically: beating evil dictators at their own game.
Those of you who read The Economist or follow our Tweets (conveniently accessible here: @Dumbagent) may have seen how Kim Jong-il was finally forced into an apology thanks to economics.
It seems that the Dear Leader, as part of a crackdown on private enterprise (all the big corporates of North Korea?) decided to drastically re-denominate the North Korean Won. This caused the currency to collapse, and the price of rice rose around 50 times. This policy, therefore, had to be undone, which it promptly was. The surprising part, however, is that Kim Jong-il then apologized to the North Korean people.
For a man who boasts that birds and crops follow his command, and that golf is too easy for him (He scored 38 under par on his first try), an admittance of being mistaken and an apology directly to the Korean people is huge. Of course, they are still living extremely miserable lives that he doesn’t seem close to alleviating, but we still applaud the power of markets to bring him to his knees at least once.
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