The MMI

Apparently, some wisenheimer at Calculated Risk has already formalized the correlation I mention below between bad financial times and badly mixed metaphors:

Dr. Krugman has inspired me to get back to the Muddled Metaphor Index. Longtime readers will know that the MMI emerged last summer as one of our blog's tools for measuring distress in the credit markets. The MMI is calculated by plotting the disintegration of metaphoricity in reports of credit market events against the general unwillingness to recognize reality until it bites you on the shoulderblade, and then chortling over the results. Some people question the science here, but we tell them to go jump in a desert.

I've seen this kind of tongue-in-cheek index before: I was reading in the Economist once about how a substantial increase in the number of occurrences of the word "recession" in the NY Times and Washington Post has successfully marked the last couple of downturns. The Economist has dubbed it the "R-word index". Kind of interesting.