Nowun Till on the recession

Why are economists unable to use the term 'decline'?

I wonder sometimes if economists are spending too much time with politicians, jazzing up their speech with double talk.

The use of the word 'decline' seems to have been banished, much as Stalin banished those he didn't like. Reports by economists now refer to 'negative growth', why? It sounds like a second hand car dealer telling someone that a car with 100,000 miles on the clock, is 'run in'. It is nothing more than presentational skills gone whack.

Who are these economists protecting and why do they need to? As a listener/reader I don't want to have to translate doublespeak into some semblance of a language I understand. I expect it of politicians, who tell us all they 'have to lie' (I will leave that to another time), but not of economists and reporters.

It gets even worse, when they they talk about the periods of growth that have preceded this period. Just today I heard a reporter, even his head doing somersaults over what exactly he was trying to say, when he told listeners ' the two quarters of negative growth need to be compared to the growth, erm strong growth, growth over the previous few years.'

Decline is decline, growth is growth and negative growth would have made Winston Smith wince.