What Forking Crisis?

cri-sis, n.; pl. cri-ses, [L. crisis; Gr krisis, a separating, decision, from krinein, to decide, separate.]
1. a serious or decisive state of things, or the turning point when an affair must soon terminate or suffer a material change; a decisive or crucial time, stage, or event.
This hour's the very of your fate.
--Dryden
2. in medicine, the turning point in the course of a disease, which indicates recovery or death.

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My point being, of course, that if there was a fucking crisis in the financial sector, it is either long over, or it has become something other than a crisis, no? Because a crisis is a crucial moment, the make-or-break, the act-now-or-die part of the plot.

And how far are we into this one? What is it now? Five months? Six? "Blah blah blah crisis in the financial sector," say the government-appointed talking heads around the world.

"Blah blah blah bailout to weather the credit crisis," shout the banking johnnies.

Folks, if it actually had been a crisis, it would already be over. That's the nature of a crisis. Something that lasts five or six months and only shows signs of getting worse isn't a crisis. It's a situation that calls for an entirely different word.

I'd suggest disaster. Fuckup. Clusterfuck. Snafu. Fubar. Cat Ass Trophy. I'd offer kitty-catty-clysm, or collapse, or decline-and-fall. There are plenty of options. If you want to limit it to the purely economic - which I believe would be terribly optimistic of you, given the worldwide problems with climate, energy supplies, food supplies, water supplies, overpopulation, deforestation, ocean acidification, desertification and mass extinction, all of which are tied into and relevant to this so-called fucking 'financial crisis' in one sense or another, you could even use the word 'depression'.

But crisis... that just sounds so much better, doesn't it? Because a crisis is something which arises and is overcome by proper action. It is a turning point in the plot, the break-point of the fever.

Crisis: so much easier to fit into a thirty-second sound bite than the Slow And Laboured End Of The Cockeyed System We Have Been Calling 'Civilisation'.