Has anyone noticed how the vocablary of the finance industry is heavily laden with moral overtones?

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Consider the following list of financial terms and the images they conjure: `assurance’, `bond’, `credit’, `consolidation’, `equity’, `interest’, ‘mutual’, ‘obligation’, `redemption’, `reconciliation’, ‘security’, `trust’, ‘venture’. I wonder how many of these terms have their origins in the Protestant business philisophy of the nineteenth century – that wealthiness is next to godliness.

Even the trashy housing loans that got us into this mess are called “sub-prime”, which to me sounds like a cut of beef only slightly more chewy than eye fillet. “Lambs to the slaughter” might have been a more honest marketing strategy.

And my favourite bit of financial jargon is ‘efficient market hypothesis’ as Doublespeak for complete bloody randomness. ?

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