01/02/09 No, don’t get the wrong idea from the headline. We haven’t suddenly swooned to the siren song of intervention. Rather it’s the word itself that has come under attack, and today I rise to its defense.
At the end of every year, Lake Superior State University in Michigan issues a list of cliches it would just as soon see banished from the English language. Every year it gets a bit of media coverage; it’s an OK “water-cooler” story at a time the news cycle runs in low gear. The cliche that seemed to be mentioned the most in this year’s stories was “bailout.”
When I first heard this on the radio, I scratched my head: Yes, it’s hard to avoid running into the word these days. But what makes it overused, or trite, or any of the other standards of your garden-variety cliche? Well, let’s examine the rationale of the folks who submitted the word for consideration:
“Use of emergency funds to remove toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets is not a bailout. When your cousin calls you from jail in the middle of the night, he wants a bailout.” Ben Green, State College, Penn.
And in its stead you would propose… what exactly?
“Is it a loan? Is it a purchase of assets by the government? Is it a gift made by the taxpayers?” Dave Gill, Traverse City, Mich.
I suppose it can be any one of those things. It’s convenient shorthand for any grant of taxpayer money to private entities.
“Now it seems as though every sector of the economy wants a bailout. Unfortunately, ordinary workers can’t qualify.” Tony, McLeansville, NC.
“Don’t we love how Capitol Hill will bailout Wall Street, but not Main Street”? Derrick Chamberlain, Midland, Mich.
Valid observations, both, but what makes it a cliche worthy of banishment from common usage?
In short, every argument the university presents on its website falls flat, or is irrelevant.
There’s an additional beauty about “bailout.” Establishment media have adopted it wholesale despite the preference of the money-shuffling class for the more benign-sounding “rescue.”
As G. Edward Griffin titled one of his chapters in The Creature from Jekyll Island, “The name of the game is bailout.”
It’s a good word. Let’s not retire it in the interest of a university’s annual publicity stunt, no matter how worthwhile it might be in the main.
Dave Gonigam
Treading a fine line between contrarian thinking and conspiracy theory, Dave Gonigam explores the nexus of finance, politics, and the media for Agora Financial's 5 Minute Forecast. He joined kindred spirits at Agora Financial in 2007 after a 20-year career as an Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and manager in local TV newsrooms nationwide.
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Loved the point about the financial industry preferring the “rescue” term.
“Rescue” creates the idea that the financial industry people are the victims. Whereas the term “bailout” implies saving somebody from something they brought onto themselves(ie the cousin calling from jail).
I believe the financial use of “bailout” is more akin to “bailing out” a leaky boat with a bucket, transferring water from inside the boat to the outside, allowing the boat to accomplish its intended function of floating rather than sinking (systemic failure).
Success of this bailout process depends partly on the vigor with which it is carried out, but also on the reason water is inside the boat in the first place. If it came from a sudden rain squall which is now past, then once the unwanted water is gone one can stop bailing and proceed to utilize the boat for its original purpose. However if water continues to leak in due to some structural flaw (a leak) then bailing must be continued indefinitely. And if water is leaking in faster than the bailout process can remove it, a better course might be to abandon ship, swim for shore, and look for a better boat.
My point is that this process shouldn’t be called a “bailout” unless there is some hope of fixing the original problem. Otherwise it is just an endless, useless, and possibly fatal waste of effort.
We had to scuttle the boat in order to bail it out.
Even the term “balance sheet” has no relevance when there nothing left to sort out. So ‘sort out’ or ‘sordid sheet’ are better terms.
At least use the verb properly. If the noun has to be “bailout”, then the operative verb from whence it came should be “bail out”, not “bailout”. You don’t bailout your friend. You bail him/her out. So there!!
Gee, why not call it the Vigorish, “Vig” for short, the bookmakers cut of the gambling-fer-ijits now underway in that little bunko operation called Washington D.C.
Or, it could be the “Pizzo” because it is, after all extortion.
The Government seems to think it is going to protect capitalism by conducting itself in a manner that essentially violates the most basic functions and values of capitalistic endeavor. Fiat Money and Fractional Reserve Banking requires sober minds and a sense of stewardship, neither of which exist in Washington to any significant degree. Come to think of it, maybe it should be called the “Bus Ticket”, gateway to a sordid ride into 3rd class.
We are all doomed……DOOOOOOOMED!!! I say…. but in the meantime look at PTEN. It is a domestic driller with a 5 percent dividend yield. It is currently capitalized at a value less than the replacement costs of it’s rigs. Prior to doomsday oil and commodities should go back up as we inflate our way out of this mess, and you get to collect a five percent yield while you are waiting.
It beats hiding out in a bunker with a bunch of spam.
Richard sounds like he has sailed a boat or 2 and knows that the present participle, “bailing”, is the un-sanitized tense in its original setting.
So the term “bailing out” is a shift of tense and from an action (verb) to a procedure or completed state (a noun)”the bailout”. This “nounification” is widespread and beyond my miserable linguistic capacity. “Cliche” does not begin to satisfy me with what is happening here with the language, market-obscuring language to be sure.
The fact that some think “bailout” is pejorative and “rescue” is not, underlines my complaint and worries..as per several upthread.
“LTCM was bailed out.” has some recognition and thereby, some think, some use as a precedent in the present circumstances albeit still unfolding…anso a slur, some others think, on the lie that it is a fait accompli. Funds to troubled banks from taxpayers present and future are hardly a completed, let alone, successful action.
But I don’t like Spam!
America has become a very creepy place. Our politicians are criminals and true imbeciles. Cynical, foolish and corrupt. The press are duplicitous villains, beneath contempt. The People are choosing Socialism and will give away still more freedoms to stay fat and comfortable (they think). Our children are sensitivity-trained into idiocy and adopt a Beavis and Butthead view of the world. Then our daughters go off to college to learn how to become godless whores.
I’m looking around for somewhere else to set down roots but where is there a place on the earth where freedom and a moral and understanding people are to be found?
Some clever trevor greek dude once proclaimed that oligarchy is the handmaiden of democracy.Freedom of speech is anethma to oligarchs.Freedom of speech can and is subverted by controlling the discourse .i.e.one may have any opinion one likes, but if one is not a ‘specialist’in that field then that opinion is held to be worthless.Another way to subvert free speach is to debase the language. Bailout falls into the second category along with terrorist.
I think that the term “Bailout” is used in the sense of when someone “bails out” of a falling airplane. They may have been the ones piloting the airplane, they may have been the ones responsible for that fact that it’s doomed to crash, but they are the ones who get the parachute, and the unwitting passengers get to eat the smoldering calamity ! So you see, the wallstreet CEOs “bailed out”. Hahahah !