A few weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stated that "We know we're in a sharp downclimb and there's no doubt that the American people know that the economy has turned down sharply." Moving beyond Paulson's overuse of the word "sharp," this quote was really interesting for me. You see, I'm pretty sure that Paulson coined a new word.

Actually, that's an exaggeration; mountain climbers use the term "downclimb" to refer to the process of descending a slope without jumping. Basically, it means "climbing down a mountain without a weighted rope." In the context of the American economy, however, this definition doesn't make much sense, unless Secretary Paulson is suggesting that the country is attempting to slowly find its way back down from the staggering heights to which its economy has ascended. If that is the case, then I'd have to say we're well on the way to accomplishing our mission.

But I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant.

Oddly, the domestic media didn't make a big deal out of Secretary Paulson's exciting use of English. Some reporters assumed that he meant "decline," as in "a sharp decline," while others accepted his new word with nary a blink. Of course, the reason for this underwhelming reaction was obvious: the reporters realized that Paulson was trying to talk about America's current recession without saying the dreaded r-word. Rather than jump on this sweet little bit of Orwellian language crime, the media simply accepted that the government was engaging in a little bit of truth-sculpting and let it go without another word.

All of this raises a very interesting question: how can we fight a recession when we can't even bring ourselves to acknowledge that it exists?