Tom Walker:
>What does it mean when politicians say "the fundamentals are sound"? The
>phrase is meaningless in itself, it only makes sense as a denial of an
>implicit charge that the fundamentals (whatever they are) _aren't_ sound.
>
>The phrase is the economic equivalent of "we are beginning to see a light
at
>the end of the tunnel", "I am not a crook" or "I have never had sexual
>relations with that woman". The denial is strictly pro forma. No one
>believes or is expected to believe it.
It is a backwards message. We should really hear it as "the sounds are
fundamental", which is probably the way it is intended, but people do get
things wrong way 'round. Look at it this way: the world is full of sound
(and, of course, fury). How could us poor plebs tell which sounds to pay
attention to unless a politician got up, waggled his finger in the air, and
told us.
When I was a kid, I was in love with the funny papers (now known as "comic
strips"). Funny papers rely on speech balloons to get their message across.
I used to fantasize about those speech balloons. What if you changed the
words in them? What if there were no words at all? How could you then tell
what was going on? It mattered greatly at the time.
Ed Weick
