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The wheat from the chaff

- Business books: Aiming high, The Economist, June 30, 2011.

2. “AN EDITOR is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff,” said Adlai Stevenson, a perpetual American presidential candidate. Sadly, his words also apply to economic and financial commentary. Economic writers love to use—and abuse—jargon; and, to give their dry discipline more appeal, they resort to tired but lurid metaphors. This can confuse the reader; at worst, it misleads. So in the interest of self-improvement we are introducing an occasional series: beating the jargon. Suggestions from readers are welcome.

This week we focus on financial babble. As any self-respecting financial journalist knows, stockmarkets never simply decline or fall, they shudder, swoon, haemorrhage, crash, plunge or sink in a river of blood. That is, of course, unless they are subject to profit-taking or a correction, which happen when the writer has recently predicted they will surge, soar, balloon, burgeon and so forth.

Periods of falling share prices, such as this summer, bring forth much talk of meltdown, bloodbaths and volatility. Oddly, however, share prices are “volatile” only when they are falling. When they start rising again, they have “stabilised”, rallied, bounced or sprinted to safety—implying that such rises reflect economic fundamentals. Thus crazy gains in share prices are perversely viewed as “stability”, while a drop to more realistic levels is seen as instability. This reinforces the dangerous view that huge rises are normal and sustainable.