Decoding the Financial Jargon

The view from the window of my apartment in New York opens to two ground zeros. To the left, the epicenter of the explosion that changed the characteristic profile of Manhattan, creating an abyss where the World Trade Center used to stand. To the right, the area surrounding Wall Street, the financial capital of the world, the epicenter of the economic crisis.

Eight years of the Bush administration – beginning with a $128 billion surplus from the Clinton Administration and leaving a $10.6 trillion deficit behind – have left us with a global financial system in ruins. I remember when, in 2006, I went to a mortgage lender to see if I could afford a house.

“I don’t have a steady job,” I began to explain, “and my income can vary from year to year, so it is difficult to estimate.”

“It doesn’t matter,” interrupted the broker. “It is not necessary to disclose your income to anyone. We can give you a loan that does not require you to present documents.”

I was shocked. The streets of the United States must really be paved in gold, I thought. Little did I know it would turn out to be fool’s gold.

Now the whole world is paying for the fact that Americans paid too much for their houses.

Once again, those who suffer the most are the poor. Ninety million Americans could fall under the poverty threshold by the end of 2010 because of the crisis. The investors of rich countries keep their money far away from the risky stock markets of emerging countries. In the U.S., the economic situation implies that people are losing their jobs and must therefore leave their houses. In Africa, the consequence is that people will not have anything to eat and will die.

The ease with which we have been deceived can be blamed for a large part on the language in the world of business that has become as incomprehensible as the Latin mass. We are victims of jargon, that of academic journals, the law, doctors and the financial market. Very few people actually know the meaning of derivatives or “credit default swaps”.

Bankers were able to rob us by hiding behind a wall of jargon. Legislators, who were presumably keeping an eye on the bankers, don’t understand their language, as the recent sessions of Congress about the financial crisis have shown us. They asked stupid question to the big leaders of finance, who were serving as witnesses before Congress. These legislators have surpassed each other in expressing their populist anger. Therefore, the bankers have hidden themselves once again behind a wall of jargon.

When the economic pages of a newspaper become as indecipherable as an academic publication it is necessary to be alarmed. In “Politics and the English language,” George Orwell warned us about the proliferation of jargon, and of using language with the goal of hiding misdeeds and tyrannies.

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,” Orwell wrote. In our days, if we substitute the word “politicians” with “financial leaders” then we will have a clear view on the language of the modern economy.

Therefore, it is here that writers and journalists assume a central role. We are the intermediaries, the interlocutors and no one else can fulfill this role. It is our responsibility to break down the wall of jargon, to listen to the financial experts and to translate their speeches to help those who are not experts. It is our responsibility to transmit to the public, in understandable language, the deliberations of the rich and powerful, so that we are all able to make informed judgments on why we have been deceived and caught.

In the same way that Tolstoy wrote on the Napoleonic wars, our books must understand and write about the financial wars of the twentieth century. Our democracy depends on this, the fact that the common people must understand the language of the elite.