Disguise the truth with wordiness

It’s something politicians and lawyers are good at, and right now the former is really shining in this field with the economic troubles we’re having. I think a major part of the problem is that no one has any clue as to what’s truly going on. Sure, we know the banks are tanking and their execs are stealing our money (like the $78 billion that disappeared with the first stimulus package), but I don’t think we really know the nitty-gritty of what’s going on.

And why is that? Well, it’s simply because we’re getting buried in an avalanche (sorry for the cliche) of bullshit. I’ve done it before writing papers in school; the less attentive professors fell for it (mainly the non-English-teaching ones), but the better ones caught on most of the time. But those people are experts in writing. How many econ experts do you know? I know a finance major and that’s about it.

I think the government needs to get someone who’s really good at layspeak to go on TV and explain to the country just what the hell’s going on. And explain it as if we were all 5, because quite frankly a lot of people have that mentality. I nominate Bill Nye. Sure, he’s a science geek, but he’s great at explaining things in layterms and probably has a better chance of understanding this economic bullshit better than most of the country. So we have the country’s econ experts explain what’s going on to Nye in Econ-ese, and then Nye will turn around and explain that explanation in layspeak.

Half the battle is knowing in specific terms what the hell is giong on. I have conversations with my future-father-in-law about all this econ bs, and most of the time I really don’t understand it. I’m not sure he even understands all of it.