- Monotonous Regularity of Booms and Busts - Je' Czaja
According to bankers, defaulting on national debts ushers in Armageddon,
yet defaults have occurred regularly throughout history and life goes
on.
Words such as “crisis” “emergency” and phrases such as “time
is running out” are daily used in news stories relating to current debt
situations in Greece. Greece is the nation currently in the spotlight,
and its default could lead to the “disintegration of the Eurozone,” as a
Wall Street Journal article warns, spilling over into Italy and Spain. From there, according to
On Wall Street, the “contagion” will spread in a “domino effect.”
Debt as Disease
The language of national debt reporting is consistently alarmist,
inferring that when a nation defaults on its debts, the results are as
catastrophic as the plague, spreading death and destruction around the
world, or like the former Cold War model of the Red Menace spreading
from nation to nation like falling dominoes. The domino effect, some may
remember, was the metaphor used to increase U.S. involvement in
Vietnam.
Fear and Jargon
The language is designed to terrify and is no doubt effective. When
laymen then try to figure out what can be done to prevent the end of the
world as we know it, financial experts pour out reams of jargon and
numbers, which serve two purposes: it confirms their status as experts
since they know all these technical terms and renders the situation
completely unintelligible for laymen.
No comments:
Post a Comment