(in case you missed it, this actually happened yesterday)

Dear Mr. Chairman and ranking members of the committee. Thank you for being smart enough to ask me to testify on these stupid new things called “cellular phones.” My name is Nouriel Roubini. I am a world renowned professor of economics and one of the few people to predict the 1987 stock market crash.

It is clear to me, Nouriel Roubini, that “wireless communication” is the biggest scam in history, and that the stock of fraud companies like Motorola, which went up 500% in a few years, were the biggest bubble ever. And I know about Bubbles Mr. Chairman, because in case you missed it, I’m Nouriel Roubini, and I predicted the 87 crash.

Motorola Stock Performance in late 80s

Proponents of this so called “wireless revolution” say it’s going to change everything, but I’ve tried using it, and the experience is terrible. The phones are huge and the call quality is awful. The battery only lasts an hour. When I use the perfectly fine existing technology of a landline to call my model girlfriends to tell them the story of how I predicted the 87 crash, I don’t have to worry about a battery, which is really important, because I’m Nouriel Roubini, and everyone wants to hear my opinion.

Also, just as I have warned with other contemporary scams and bubbles, like those pointless things called beepers, which are only used by drug dealers, these wireless phones are only useful for criminals activity. Why would any decent person ever want a different way to communicate?

Not that they can with today’s cell phones anyway, because the calls drop often, and that will never improve. If there’s one thing we can all agree on about a new technology, it’s that it doesn’t improve. I know about technology, because I’m Nouriel Roubini, and I predicted the 1987 crash.

The scam artists keep trying to tell us that wireless technology will change the world, but that’s only a distraction from the amazing innovations going on with existing landlines. We’ve already transformed from rotary dialing to touch-tones, and now you can even get a phone in the shape of a football. Now that’s real innovation, Mr. Chairman, a subject I clearly know a lot about, because I use a lot of adverbs and adjectives when I speak, and more importantly, predicted the 1987 crash.

The idiots that believe in wireless technology like to fantasize about it someday being used to do other things, like sending text messages or even pictures. That just proves how stupid they are, because if there’s another thing we can all agree on with technology, it’s that it never evolves beyond its original purpose. Besides, you can already use the perfectly fine solution of a fax machine to send pictures over a landline, something I do regularly when I send headshots to reporters to remind them that they should have me on air to talk about how I predicted the 87 crash.

In closing, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and I’ve already been right once, so I’m going to keep calling everything a bubble until I’m right again. I’m Nouriel Roubini. I’ve predicted 9 of the last 2 bubbles, so people should take me seriously.