Did Business Jargon Cause the Credit Crunch?

Recently the UK’s Channel 4 ran a documentary called “How the Banks Went Bust.” Financial experts on the program made it clear that language had been Question exploited and misused to such an extent that it contributed to the economic disaster.

Comments from the three experts:

Geraint Anderson was one of the UK’s top four brokers before writing his book Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile about “financial philanderings” in the financial services industry. In the documentary, he said, “we in the City use arcane language and peculiar terminology to confuse those who don’t earn as much as us (i.e., pretty much everyone). It makes us sound like we’re doing something extraordinarily complicated and technically unfathomable and keeps our potential detractors in the dark. We are a much harder target if the ‘common man’ feels intimidated by our complex world and doesn’t even understand what we do. We push around bits of paper. That’s what we do. That’s all we do.”

Alchemy Partners’ Jon Moulton, another highly respected financial figure, made this comment: “UK banks got involved with things they couldn’t measure, couldn’t control, didn’t understand. Some got into very sexy, almost incomprehensible contracts. Synthetic mezzanine CLO squareds? Not sure I know what it is either but I promise you that some of the banks have them.”

Neil Smith, the chief investment officer at Corham Capital said, the “simple fact is that things had become so complicated that only those people directly involved with the creation of these products knew what they were. CDO (collateralized debt obligation) guys had every sales trick in the book . . . . Their whole strategy was to make people feel silly if they didn’t understand the product.”

Let’s learn from this. When we encounter unclear communication on an important subject – in business, finance, politics, or elsewhere – somebody is probably hiding something.

[I plead guilty to committing a serious business jargon offense. According to the Daily Telegraph, “credit crunch” occupies the number 8 spot on their top-20 list of the most despised business jargon terms.]

h/t to Plain English Campaign