From the editor
Banned words speak volumes
In the 1990s, the FT banned its journalists from using the word 'trillion'. Being such a stupidly large number, it was considered to mean nothing to your average reader. This, as Gillian Tett, the FT's assistant editor and author of credit crunch bestseller, Fool's Gold, pointed out at the Edinburgh Book Festival this week, made it hard to write about the state of the Japanese economy (she was Japan Bureau Chief at the time).
The extent of Japan's debt crisis and then of the bail-outs meant that no other word would do. Now Tett has a similar language-related problem: the FT has banned today's most overused financial shorthand – 'green shoots'. On the plus side, it's not a phrase Tett needs as much as she once needed the word 'trillion'. Why? Because she doesn't really see very many.
There was a point not long ago where Tett thought there was a real chance the financial system would totally implode, to the extent that "money would just stop coming out of the ATMs". That risk, she accepts, is probably past, as is the "collective heart attack" the corporate sector suffered when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
• Read the full editor's letter here: Banned words speak volumes
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