Last night, while reading The New Yorker, I came across this sentence in a “Talk of the Town” piece by Lauren Collins:

And then there’s George W. Bush, who passed out in the process of eating a pretzel stick, performing a sort of auto-Heimlich.

I had completely forgotten about Bush’s near-death experience back in 2002. And I started to wonder: If President Bush had, indeed, died by choking on a pretzel, what would it have meant for the pretzel market? Would pretzel sales go up? Or would the nation rally against the salty treat for bringing down our Commander in Chief?

Any economist/wonky types care to weigh in?