WASHINGTON – If only the economy had caught fire this fast.
“Green shoots” – the phrase, if not the phenomenon – has been everywhere since March 15, when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used the term in an interview on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.”
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And Bloomberg News reports that some businesspeople are getting tired of it. “These may be the two most overused and annoying words of my investment career,” John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors LLC in Arlington, Texas, told the news service. “Every possible sign of a recovery is anointed with the phrase.”
At the time Bloomberg’s story was published early this morning, a Google search for the phrase “green shoots” returned 4.86 million hits. By 9 a.m. today, the number of hits had grown to 5.34 million.
In May, the phrase appeared 3,123 times in news stories – up from just 436 times in February, according to research by Nomura Holdings Inc., the Japanese brokerage.
Bernie McSherry, a senior vice president at the New York brokerage Cuttone & Co., told Bloomberg that as “catchphrases go, I can’t recall another business- related one that has had such a grip on the public.” But, he said, “Since green shoots don’t remain mere shoots forever, it’s time to retire the phrase and replace it with something indicative of where the economy is today.”
Indeed, the fact that “green shoots” is on everyone’s lips does not automatically signal that economic recovery is afoot. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist nicknamed “Dr. Doom” for accurately predicting the housing crisis, said last week: “People talk a lot about these green shoots. … [But] I see more yellow weeds than green shoots.”
