Please Check My Math

James Kwak in discussing Barack Obama's putative deficit reduction panel, which is supposed to seat people from both sides of the aisle to address the deficit, asks the following question, "What if they put Mankiw and Krugman on this commission?"

Well, let us assume that both Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman mass 75 kg.

It's fair to characterize them as the economic equivalents of anti-matter and matter, so:

• e=mc²
• M=75+75=150 kg
• e=1.35x10¹⁹joules
• According to the wiki, a megaton is 4.184x10¹⁵ joules
• This gives ^{1.35x1019 joules}/_{4.184x10^{15 joules}/megaton} = 3226.5 megatons of energy released.

I think that this places the idea of placing both of them on the same panel as "imprudent".