Steven Major, Global Head of Fixed Income Research at HSBC
This morning, at approximately 07.12, I listened to Steven Major, Head of Fixed Income at HSBC, patiently explain to the interviewer, Sarah Montague, as if she was still in her pram, that all our worries about Greece will soon be behind us. Its financial future was secure and assured.
However, he did also admit that Greece’s debt is 120% of GDP, that the interest rate it pays on its borrowings is up to 5%, and that it is suffering 6% negative growth.
What?
I see in today’s Times’ leading article, 20 Feb 2012, that, “the Greek economy … is now in its fifth year of recession. Output shrank by another 7 per cent in the last quarter and unemployment is more than 20 per cent. Among young people, almost one in two is out of work.”
Negative growth is, at best, a feeble euphemism which fools no-one, and at worst an insult to those who can no longer afford to buy food in Athens.
The first time I ever heard this nonsensical expression, negative growth, was at a Nielsen presentation in Newcastle, 1979. I heard the client’s senior chap in the room say that the numbers showed that the brand under Nielsen’s spotlight was demonstrating “negative growth stability”.
Later, as the Y&R agency team hung around in Newcastle’s airport, waiting for a Vickers Viscount to trundle us back to Heathrow, my boss said to me, “Business bullshit.”
Kevin Duncan
Some years later, Kevin Duncan decided he had had enough of business bullshit, and started to produce books of cartoons full of idiotic nonsense which he had actually heard business people use.
Business Bullshit, by Kevin Duncan, 89p from Amazon for Kindle
You’ll be familiar with the junk-speak – “Here’s my elevator pitch. We’ll use a blue sky session to think outside the box so we can identify the low hanging fruit, and segment the market along societal allegiances…”
Why would Steven Major use the ridiculous euphemism of negative growth?
I can understand that The Emperor Hirohito wasn’t very keen on announcing that two atomic bombs had entirely erased Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the map. Consequently, he said that the war was not necessarily proceeding to Japan’s advantage, so this might be a wise moment to surrender.
In Mr Major’s case, he knows, that no matter whether or not Greece gets its €130bn bailout tonight, its membership of the Eurozone is doomed. And, if Greece decides to bail out, so can other current member countries.
What few people are admitting is that Germany is really the odd one out in the Eurozone rather than Greece. Its economy is not like any other of the Eurozone economies.
Kevin’s five little books of Business Bullshit are available from Amazon for a matter of pennies as Kindle downloads. Give yourself a treat and download all five for a measly £4.45. They are funny and deadly in equal measure.
They are also a reminder that bullshit is not good for business.
Your thought on Germany is like a petunia in an onion patch. I was hoping for a bit more on that. A two petunia desertation, at least.
best,
j.
P.S. You catching my radio show?
DARK LANDING, weekly on podomatic.com
dissertation. sorry, i’ve been too long on deadline and my brain is fried.
j.
My manager once told me, in all seriousness and without a hint of irony, that business in the country he was about to transfer to had “de-grown” in the previous year. So I said, “You mean, it declined?” And he *looked over his shoulder to check no-one was listening* and said, like I’d just broken some sort of religious taboo, “De-grown.”
Also, I once worked in a team of people where everyone in the team had replaced the word “by” with the word “until” – as in “Until when can you finish this report?” / “I can probably have it ready until Friday”. This was because the team leader was German, and consistently used “until” instead of “by” (which apparently reflects the German construction for this phrase). Rather than correct him, everyone in the team – even the native English speakers – chose to adopt and perpetuate the error.
I’d like to hear more about the petunia that is the German economy too, please.
My hardest English-based meetings were definitely set in Paris with a Spanish lady as the senior Citroen client. She was European Marketing Director. One of my French Citroen clients, over a beer, asked me if I understood anything she said because none of the French understood things like “remember me this”. What is clear, however, is that it doesn’t matter how you pronounce English words. I find Geordies, Liverpudlians and Glaswegians harder to follow than my French students. I’m going to show the the latter group your Pain photo today, which they’ll love. S
Years ago I sat through a Nielsen presentation with a Mars client of mine. When the brand share came up and was unchanged from the previous period my client became rather itchy. I asked him why; he leaned over and said: It would have been nice if the share had increased a bit after I took over the brand. He was desperate for such a correlation and so I suggested half jokingly he could call it a “positive stability momentum”. He jumped on this, put it into the report and claimed Nielsen had called it that. Nobody questioned the authority of Nielsen and it became a phrase in the busineess for a few years to brush over the desparation that Nilesen was unable to measure all the positive things the marketers had done. We’re still friends and I hope he doesn’t read this. J
Great response. Many thanks. it’s reminded me to restart the blog. S