A brilliant coinage:
the fiscal cliff. Short, punchy, and it assonates -- that is, the stressed vowels are
identical. The phrase has been
kicking around for a while, but it found its kairos in Fed chief Bernanke’s testimony earlier this year. Had he instead called it the fiscal declivity (which still assonates,
but is neither short nor graphic), the phrase might have enjoyed something like
the celebrity of Greenspan’s evocative irrational
exuberance, though only among that segment of the population that
understands words like declivity and exuberance. Had he instead dubbed it the financio-econometric readjustment, the phrase would have died in
infancy.
Philological footnote: In French it comes out as précipice budgétaire -- non-chiming, but
still visually arresting. But, since the phrase is not protected by assonance the way it is in English (not that assonance counts in French in any case), it is subject to flaccid variation. Thus, just now I heard "mur budgétaire". Not nearly as visually arresting -- instead of Wile-E Coyote rushing off a cliff, you just get Elmer Fudd running into a wall.
We earlier posted a psychological and game-theoretic
assessment of the concept of pre-commitment,
of which the fiscal cliff is one example. Since this issue will apparently be with us till at
least December thirty-first, we invite you to peruse the essay:
No comments:
Post a Comment