Abelson is a little over the top on Rumsfeld, still funny though...
Street Talk
BURN RATE.
That phrase, as most investors doubtless know, is part of the Wall Street lexicon. It first came into Street usage back in the early 1990s to describe the pace at which the scores of newly minted biotech companies were hemorrhaging the cash raised in their maiden public offerings. As it happened, that was the only cash they had, since products, much less profits, were a distant dream.
Later in the fabulous decade, burn rate enjoyed a revival in honor of the enormous brood of Internet fledglings, which also were notable for their total lack of earnings. And, indeed, Barron's did investors a great service by periodically publishing a roundup showing the remarkable progress being made by the online outfits in emptying out their coffers.
Imagine then how surprised and thrilled we were to hear that now grown-dusty-from-disuse phrase trip lightly from the lips of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on several different recent occasions and in several disparate venues-at a Senate hearing, for one, and on TV, for another. Each time, he invoked burn rate to describe the cost of the occupation of Iraq (which, for the insatiably curious, comes to $4 billion a month, or double projections of a scant few months ago).
In the interests of full disclosure, we confess that we're a confirmed admirer of Mr. Rumsfeld's way with words; he is not, like his boss, a master of malapropism, but a skilled smithy of euphemisms that enable him to deftly soften language's hard and discomforting edges. Our all-time favorite is his characterization of the tumult that followed on the end of the formal fighting in Iraq as "untidy."
Admittedly, burn rate is not typically Rumsfeldian in that it's actually much more graphic than its pedestrian equivalents like "tab" or "drain" or, of course, "cost." And while reluctant to indulge in any two-bit psychologizing (out of principle and also lest Mr. Rumsfeld, a kindly sort but given to fits of grumpiness, sic some of those tough eggs from Special Forces on us), we nonetheless can't help but find his "burn rate" reference to our expenditures in Iraq intriguing, possibly even revelatory.
But Freud, schmeud, we think it's a neat piece of linguistic transplantation. Any day now, we expect Mr. Rumsfeld to bring some welcome perspective to Iraq by dipping into Street lingo to depict what we've been experiencing in that star-crossed country as a "technical correction," pretty much to be expected after such a smashing advance. Or, to describe the capture of a fresh bunch of those wild-eyed, bearded Taliban-type fundamentalists as "prophet-taking." Or, to refer to the nasty animosity of some of those ingrates we liberated from Saddam's chokehold as "negative goodwill."
If only as a happy contrast to the usual bureaucratic babble that passes for official utterance, the defense secretary's employment of Street idiom is a blessing in itself. But we trust it's not too much of a stretch to read into it a conferring of Washington's seal of approval on Wall Street, which, for three long years now, has been about as much in favor in our nation's beloved capital as the highly communicable disease of your choice.
What a wonder a bull market is! Even an ersatz version like the one we've been having can exert its powerful charms and change the hearts and minds of humans and politicians alike. |
