It's "Rehab," Not "Nationalization"

by: tristan

Wed Feb 25, 2009 at 09:16

Well, if we call it "nationalization," it may not get done, or it may not get done in the most effective way.

We need a different term to start promoting in all of our blog posts, interviews, YouTube clips, everything.  

Call it bank rehab.  And for the process of dealing with all the bad loans, call it bank detox.  Why?  It places the emphasis on the illness of the banks -- and the irresponsibility of the bankers -- rather than on the authority the government is exercising.  It replaces a 15-letter word that most people can't define too well with two 5-letter words that everyone knows.  (Safe to say there's never been a #1 R&B hit called "Nationalization.")  It makes the concept approachable instead of wonky.  And as a bonus, newspapers and magazines and the tickers on the TV news channels will gladly embrace the shorter words to save space.  (So if you talk to any mass media types, make sure to say "rehab" and "detox" as much as possible.)

Plus, it sidesteps a word and a concept that smacks of old-style central planning, a word that's most commonly used today to describe a dictator's seizure of privately held assets.  It sounds European, and in the annals of American political rhetoric, sounding European can be fatal (which is why we should also ban "the Swedish model" from our vocabulary, unless it's to make a joke).

If we want to maximize the support for a policy, then we need to make sure that the name for that policy is a good one.  This should no longer be a controversial approach; we just need to follow through.