The (Great) Name Game: What to Call the Current Financial Crisis?

The first World War didn't get its name until the prospect of a second one came around. Before then, it was often referred to, without irony, as The Great War or, more optimistically, as The War to End All Wars.

The Great Depression wasn't called The Great Depression until well after the stock market collapse of 1929. Furthermore, the twentieth-century Great Depression doesn't even stand alone as the only Great Depression in history. Far from it, in fact. There was a "great" depression in Finland as recently as the 1990s. And British economic historians often use the term "Great Depression" to describe the agricultural collapse of the late 19th century, which laid waste to the British farming community. (This period is also sometimes referred to as the Long Depression.)

And isn't it interesting how our news media scrambles to brand things? Crises in particular. Wars. Famines. Floods. Massive disasters of any kind.

Black Monday.

Black Tuesday.

D-Day.

9/11.

In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, the compulsion to reduce incredibly complex quagmires into thirty-second soundbites seems to have reached an all-time high.

"The news always feels the need to name everything," says Jonathan Wald, the senior vice president for business news at CNBC. "If it's not branded, it doesn't exist in modern television."

Adds NBC News anchor Brian Williams: "When you're in the middle of something, it's hard to brand it."

Indeed---at least insofar as the current economic crisis is concerned. We are now many months into a deep and ugly recession of genuine historical importance, and to the best of my knowledge, no official moniker has yet emerged. Maybe this is because we're still in shock. Our collective tongue is tied. Or perhaps we're still deciding, still in the thick of it, and therefore cannot see with clarity the ultimate nature of the beast. Maybe an official name won't emerge for years to come, when at long last we reach a final, official consensus on what the hell just happened to us. Maybe with time comes perspective...the gradual emergence of widely agreed-upon (generic) terminology.

Over the past several weeks, many journalists have made a point to address this very conundrum, including Brian Stelter of the New York Times and Justin Fox at Time magazine's The Curious Capitalist.

Darren Gersh of the Nightly Business Report also took a stab at it, narrowing down his list of names to the following three contenders: The Subprime Crisis, The Credit Crisis, and The Great Unwind.

The Subprime Crisis and The Credit Crisis are generic enough to have no official creator. The Great Unwind, however, has been traced back to Stefan-Michael Staimann and Susanne Knips at the Frankfurt investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort.

Says Staimann: "I am not sure where exactly I picked up the phrase 'great unwind' (I can't believe I invented it). To me, it simply describes nicely the reversal of financial imbalances and excesses that had built up primarily in credit markets over the last few years."

Hard to say if Staimann's tag will stick. As Gersh points out, The Great Unwind seems a bit too specific and insider-ish to take hold. If past is prologue, it would seem that the eventual winner will have to be utterly simplistic in nature. (See: World War I, World War II, etc.)

With this in mind, I thought it might be nice to take a poll:

 
 

Consider it a peripheral attempt to affect the historical record. And of course feel free to weigh in with your own creative suggestions on the comment board below---or at the bottom of the poll itself, under "Other."

Comments

[dogwatch]

It's the Dollarholl­erflationa­rybust.

[RoloTomassi]

The Supply-side Depression­...or, Friedman's Folly.

[cam]

The Great Implosion

[libmac]

As Thom Hartmann says: "The Second Republican Great Depression­."

[shanefish]

I don't know what to call the crisis, other than theft. But I do have a name for my restore America campain...­it is called "Rails-to-­trails-bac­k-to-rails­-again".

[shanefish]

Since I've been forcasting this for 20+ years and even predicted 9/11, i will just have to call it "sheer irony." I am no genius, so how is it that little-ole me could have seen all of this coming down? Take the blindfold off America! China owns your children's future. What are you going to do about it?

[Dyan54]

I coined this current financial mess--- "BubbleLand". It's a combination of oil and real estate. The word is short and easy to remember. Most all the others were good too. It all stems from greed.gree­d, and more greed without thinking of anyone else. High priced oil and high priced housing is what started the already small snowball to become the big avalanche that came crashing down on us all.

[themodernleader]

Call it like it is: The Age of Swindle and Decline

[NHGranite]

Frankly, I think Mr.Cheney had a lot to do with this; therefore, I vote for Dickonomics.

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

WWI and WWII. Now GDI and GDII

[tbone99]

Reaping Republicanism

[Brad Listi - Huffpost Blogger]

Sounds too exclamatory. Sort of like "leaping lizards!"

[tbone99]

well they are that.

[Marinated]

"The Great Lootery"

[Brad Listi - Huffpost Blogger]

Heh.

[RepugsOut08]

It's gonna make a great cowboy movie some day. "Bush Casualties and the Subprime Bids."
The exciting adventures of the "hole in the head" gang!

[Brad Listi - Huffpost Blogger]

It really would be great if someone did a (very) dark satire of the Bush/Cheney years while riffing on the conventions of the western. These guys did everything they could to co-opt that iconography and make themselves seem like salt of the earth Americans from the backcountry. George W. Bush as a cowboy is totally absurd. Mel Brooks couldn't have written a better comic character. Too bad the reality was real, and so dire.

[RepugsOut08]

I still think The Big Bust works. Astronomers have gotten away with the Big Bang for decades without the sexual reference being a problem, Brad. It sure beats The Tit In A Wringer Crisis. Anyway, I'll give it one more shot.
The Deep Doo Doo. I know you won't pick it, but don't you think it would be fun for future students to hear their teachers say, "You're gonna be in deep doo doo if you don't get your report on The Deep Doo Doo in on time!" ;)

[talibanished]

Either "The Great Reversal" or "The 21st Century U-Turn".

[Brad Listi - Huffpost Blogger]

Not to get technical here, but if either of these suggestions winds up being the one, I'm going to have to hope for the "21st Century U-Turn." If we're doing a U-Turn, fine. We're turning around and heading back the way we came. Which really doesn't sound all that appealing to me right now.

But if it's "The Great Reversal," that seems to imply---if we continue with the automotive analogy you seem to have going---that the car has now been thrown into reverse, and we're all driving backwards, presumably at very high speeds. This could be dangerous, don't you think?

[talibanished]

Brad,
Actually, I'm thinking of our current economic situation as a pendulum which has recently reached the end of an extreme arc. What will likely unfold over the next few years will be a horrifying swing of equal magnitude in the opposite direction (thus The Great Reversal). In that case I'm not sure your "Name It to Tame It" proposal will have much effect.

[shanefish]

Have you ever been driving and thrown it into reverse? You're still going straight for a while, meanwhile the wheels are smoking from the reversed traction. This definately sounds dangerous.