We still haven’t found the right word for the current economic meltdown, columnist says
“Recession” is a gross understatement when 650,000 people a month are losing their jobs, says Gail Lethbridge, a business owner and columnist with the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. Yet, even as the bad news piles up, “depression” seems too strong for the malaise slowing global economies—at least for now. Given the very real impact diction can have on the markets, this is no trivial matter. So Lethbridge considers some of the word amalgams popping up in the financial press, mercifully rejecting such vapid hybrids as “decession.” Still, Lethbridge’s own proposal—”melancholia”—falls short. Most of us are feeling less melancholy than damn well scared—the sort of fear one feels when one hears of trouble at a nearby nuclear reactor. Which, come to think of it, is why “meltdown” works pretty well.