"I am so desperate to know how it feels to read the most complicated book in the world, " said He Kuang, a 50-year-old civil servant in the coastal city Xiamen, who bought the translation.

WSJ: 'Finnegans Wake' Is Greek to Many; Now Imagine It in Chinese

In 2010, the White House and the Congressional Budget Office seized upon the lowest estimate they could find: A brief from Rob Valetta and Katherine Kuang at the San Francisco Fed which suggested that extended unemployment benefits had added only 0.4 percentage points to the unemployment rate by December 2009.

FORBES: The Republicans' Holiday Gift To President Obama