Financial Crisis Solved: Inject Capital Into Credit Addicts
Friday, 17 October 2008
Many observers have noticed an awful lot of metaphors are being used to describe the current American financial crisis. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the Metaphor Observatory opined that this surge of metaphor was a response to the fact that nobody could understand the situation. As it turns out, that “nobody” includes government regulators, investment houses and lending institutions.
Despite the impending economic cataclysm surrounding bad loans, American leaders set aside their fears and bravely borrowed more money, throwing in a few bells, horns and arrows to feed the piggy. There is never an economic hole so deep that we can’t dig our way out of it. And man the shovels have been flying.
As George Lakoff noted, metaphors are usually chosen from somewhere close at hand. For all but the transcendental, that would include our own body. This is why metaphors equating the economy to a sick lifeform would soon get brought up – which is where we Observed the following:
the oxygen is cut off – lending is the oxygen of the economy (spending is the fuel?).
health of the economy – the economy is a living, breathing creature.
lifeblood of the economy – lending carries nutients around an economy.
put a tournequet on the situation – economic lifeblood is leaking due to injury.
shock the heart of the economy – the heart of the economy (unspecified) has stopped.
stop the bleeding – economic lifeblood is leaking.
inject capital – money is a blood transfusion.
addicted to credit – the lifeform has uncontrollable bad habits.
Both houses and the president visited upon the lacerated economy with a policy bandage and an injection of capital to replace the lost lifeblood, leaving suckers to pay the bill. But the rescue shot was contanimated with pork, and the butcherous banker beneficiaries returned to old habits. In the end, our 700 billion dollar injection turned out to be one giant suppository.
