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There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere
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All this talk about “green shoots” is out of control. It’s become the go-to oh-aren’t-I-clever analogy for signs of economic recovery.
It’s obnoxious. It’s factually inaccurate. And it must be stopped!
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Source: goldfishinfo.com Just affix the suction-cup base to a smooth surface and voila! Green shoots. |
“‘Greenshoots’ implies that we have nascent growth. But we aren’t there yet … There are no green shoots,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at Fact and Opinion Economics.
“I am sick of it!” Peter Cohan, founder of management-consulting and venture-capital firm Peter S. Cohan & Associates, said of the term. “[I]t’s condescending because it oversimplifies what is really happening and it seems to imply that just by using a clever phrase, the reality will somehow be transformed.”
“Green shoots make me think of kudzu,” said Alyx Kaczuwka, creator of the blog LOLFed.com, referring to an invasive plant species from Japan that’s wreaked a lot of havoc on the southeast U.S. “At the rate by which this term has gone parabolic, I am hoping it burns out soon,” she said.
The term “green shoots” sprung into popular consciousness during the recession of the early 1990s. The man who started it all was Norman Lamont, then the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e., Treasury Secretary), who said during a speech at a Tory party conference in December 1991, “The green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again.”
The ironic part is that Lamont’s “green shoots” were just as much a mirage as the fields of green shoots we’re planting today. He was demoted in May 1993 and later resigned after 2 ½ years came and went with nary a green shoot.
Still, that hasn’t stopped people from planting green shoots by the truckload from coast to coast: One day last week, Bloomberg had 118 articles referencing the horticulture metaphor, one reporter noted. Google “green shoots” and you get more than 700,000 results. [GOOG
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Surely we can come up with a term that’s actually, I don’t know, factually correct, to refer to these glimmers of hope in the economy.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes