You are the type of person who leans toward the frugal end of the spending spectrum, the extremely frugal end. Family and friends have no understanding of your inner self, but neither do you. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time driving to a factory outlet trying to buy either a T-shirt commemorating the second moon landing or a coffee cup commemorating Thor Heyerdahl's Pacific crossing aboard the Kon-Tiki. Be on the lookout for jovial bank tellers. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter G, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 143227. Your preferred shopping venue is thrift stores. Your special symbol is the comma (,).

As a Brown Pragmatox, you are down-to-earth and practical. You are hard working and industrious. You are frugal to the point that you might even refrain from making a purchase that you really, really need. Doing so often causes problems down the road. You definitely go with function over form and substance over style.

An inefficient, bad, or adverse outcome of a market exchange that results because buyers and/or sellers make decisions based on asymmetric information. This commonly results in a market that exchanges a lesser quality good, what is termed the market for lemons. Two related problems resulting from asymmetric information are moral hazard and the principal-agent problem. Two methods of lessoning the problem of adverse selection are signalling and screening.

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Our pedestrian's jaunt through the economy is not, unfortunately, an unrestrained shopping spree for confectioneries, spark plug tools, and Houston, Texas. We have other important errands to run. At the moment we need to hike over to Shady Valley's exclusive provider of cable television services, the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television Company, Inc., to inquire about a mysterious fee that appeared last month's bill.

The good news is that the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters (the 4M people) Cable office is a mere 2 miles (3 kilometers for the metrically inclined) from the Shady Valley Central Town Sprawling Hills Shopping Mall. A hop, skip, and a moderately long jump later, our excursion through the economy takes us to the front door of the 4M Cable Television Company where I hope to discover why last month's cable bill included a $3,569 charge for something called "The Vacation Channel." I didn't even know I had a vacation channel. (But, I'm sure it's a great channel, and if I don't have it, then I will certainly subscribe. Please don't disconnect me.)

Of course, because this an afternoon workday, the doors of the 4M office are locked. I can almost make out, through the expensive stained glass windows, what appears to be several Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television employees, with champaign bottles in hand, dancing on expensive mahogany desks. Let's not disturb them. As they say in the cable business, an upset worker is a disconnected customer.
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