I have decided, unilaterally, that we are not in a crisis right now. Is this because I am a professional politician, economist or analyst? No! It is because the "problem" that we think we are facing right now doesn't have a sweet, doomsday sort of name.
Think about it. Name one of the major catastrophic events of history. How about . . . the Black Death. You have to admit, as far as punchy names go you can't get any better than the "Black Death." In fact, the only way you could jazz that up is to add some sort of supernatural or post-apocalyptic entity to it such as, "The Diablo Black Death."
Let's try another one that's not as obvious. How about the "Flood?" Not only does this entail the destruction of all living things (except Noah and his pals), but the very word even inspired its own apocalyptic alien race that sought to destroy the universe! Imagine if we called our current situation "Unreal Doom Quake IV." Then we would actually have some nouns and adjectives to get worked up about.
Right now, however, the best we can up with is the "Economic Crisis." The only people who ever gt excited about the word "economic" are single 40's somethings sitting at home memorizing the buttons to push for "Green Grass and High Tides" on expert. Our current problem isn't even cool enough to spell with a Y, "Crysis," or possibly an extraneous E, "Crysise." People aren't going to look back at this time and talk about how terrible life was, people are going to look back and see a bunch of bored upper-middle class people who have nothing better to do than make fun of Jim Cramer (as if he needed the help), watch SNL digital shorts over and over and talk about how they had to refinance their Ferrari.
Until someone relabels our "crisis" the "Apocalyptic Destruction Inferno," I'm not moving a muscle. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch "I'm on a Boat."
The inhabitants of Vault 101 aren't worried about the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
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