Bailout

Mixed metaphors describe economic crisis

by Jessica Mador, Minnesota Public Radio

The hotly debated $700 billion bailout bill passed by Congress last week introduced a number of complicated financial concepts into the pop culture lexicon lately -- things like credit default swaps and mortgage derivatives.

But even economists admit that the innerworkings of the credit and financial markets, and the plan to rescue them, are incredibly complicated and hard to explain.

In an attempt to convince voters of the need for the rescue, lawmakers and political candidates resorted to lots of mixed metaphors.

Senate Candidate Al Franken:

"The way I look at this is we were trying to drain a basement that's filled with water and it's raining out and we have a roof with a huge hole in it and we're draining the basement without fixing the roof. We needed to fix the roof, here."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

"The administration came to see us and they lifted a rock and under that rock we saw lots of vermin. We have started to address it in this legislation."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar:

"Wall Street basically is the one thing I agree with Bush on. Last summer, he said they were, like, drunk and now they have a hangover and the problem is the American people are being called in when they weren't invited to the party to clean up the furniture."

Sen. Richard Shelby:

"And they haven't even said today that this will end the crisis. They said this will lubricate the financial markets if we take the financial sludge, as we call it, off the books of the banks."

Warren Buffet:

"In the credit markets, it's like nothing I've ever seen. It really is an economic Pearl Harbor. We have never seen anything like this."

The music used in the recorded version of this story is by Esquivel.

Broadcast Dates

• Morning Edition, 10/06/2008, 7:40 a.m.