Exuberant

Exuberant (pronounced ig-zoo-ber-uh nt)

(1) Of people (and sometimes applied to animals), very high-spirited; effusively and almost uninhibitedly enthusiastic energetic and enthusiastic; extremely joyful and vigorous.

(2) In literary use, of things that grow, abundant, luxuriant, profuse.

(3) In medicine, profuse in growth or production.

1425-1475:  From the late Middle English, from the Middle French exubérant, from the Latin exūberantem (nominative exūberāns), (overabundance; superfluous; extraordinary),  the present active participle of exūberō (be abundant) snd present participle of exūberāre (be abundant, grow luxuriously).  The construct was ex- (out (though here probably in the special sense of "thoroughly)) + ūberāre (be fruitful) which was related to ūber (udder or fertile), from the primitive Indo-European root eue-dh-r-, the original idea being the image of a cow or she-goat which was producing so much milk it naturally dripped or sprayed from the udder.  From the 1510s it was used to mean "growing luxuriantly, and within decades it picked up the idea of describing "an overflowing", a borrowing from the contemporary French exubérance, from the Late Latin exuberantia (superabundance) the abstract noun from exuberare, this extending to the figurative sense of "affections, joyous emotions etc by the mid-seventeenth century (the noun euberancy noted since the 1610s).  Exuberant is a adjective and, exuberance and (the archaic) exuberancy are nouns, exuberating is a verb and exuberantly an adverb; the noun plural is exuberances

Fedspeak, Alan Greenspan and irrational exuberance

Dr Alan Greenspan (b 1926) between 1987-2006 served five terms as chairman of the US Federal Reserve (the US central bank), remarkably, under four presidents from both parties.  Among the Fed’s chairs, he remains the best remembered exponent of a specific fork of officialise: Fedspeak, the jargon-laced technique of expression described by economist Alan Blinder (b 1945) as "a turgid dialect of English" used by Fed chairs to make wordy and vague statements which, while reassuring, are designed not to encourage financial market traders to over-react; some labelled it “constructive ambiguity”.  The coinage is a nod to Newspeak in George Orwell’s (1903-1950) dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the invented language of a totalitarian state constructed around a simplified grammar with a closed vocabulary set suitable for expressing only the ideas and concepts of the regime.

Blowing smoke.  Fed chairman Paul Volcker appearing before a congressional committee in 1986, a time one could smoke a cigar at such events.

Previous Fed chairs were well-aware those in financial markets attributed great value to statements from the governors and that could lead to some self-fulfilling prophecies.  To try to prevent this, in their public statements, governors adopted Fedspeak to deliver ambiguous and cautious statements, purposefully to obscure and detract meaning from the statement, Greenspan describing Fed-speak as learning “…to mumble with great incoherence.”  He may have been thinking of the (possibly apocryphal) remark by one pope: “When one is infallible, one has to be careful what one says”.  Once, when a US senator told Greenspan he understood what he’d just said, the chairman replied “Then I must have misspoken" and was delighted when different organs of the financial press reported his speeches using headlines with diametrically different meanings.  There’s always been the suspicion the style emanating from the Fed was intended also to deflect the attention of politicians, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) sometimes complained about the jargon-laden text issued by Arthur Burns (1904–1987; Fed chairman 1970-1978) and the formidable Paul Volcker (1927–2019; Fed chairman 1979-1987) was known to adopt Fedspeak to bat away unwelcome congressional enquiries although he was noted also for plain-speaking about inflation, the money supply and growing structural imbalances in the US economy, forcefully making his views known even to presidents.  In 1987, Ronald Reagan declined to offer Volker another term; perhaps the chairman should have used more Fedspeak.

It’s something of an irony that Greenspan’s best remembered phrase, "irrational exuberance", is really not Fed-speak although the two words were part of a long, complex speech, much of which certainly belongs to the genre.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets.  We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past.  But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?  (Tokyo, 5 December 1996).

Rationally exuberance: Lindsay Lohan collecting an award, 2005 MTV Movie Awards, Los Angeles June, 2005.

Immediately after the speech, the local market unexpectedly dropped 3%, exchanges around the world following the Nikkei’s lead.  The reaction however was short-lived and a major slump didn’t happen for another three years, the biggest dip on the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) composite, the tech-heavy board listing many of the stocks Greenspan thought priced at levels induced by irrational exuberance.   It was only in retrospect the phrase became well-remembered and part of colloquial speech.  Given the history of Fedspeak, "Greenspeak" briefly gained currency but never caught on, presumably because “green” was so vested with connotations in its usual (modern) context and thus easily and erroneously associated with concepts such as “greenwash” & "green-sheen".  Indeed, although Greta Thunberg (b 2003; Swedish weather forecaster) in her critique of COP26 (The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, Glasgow, October-November 2021) provided "blah, blah, blah" as a memorable sound-bite, "greenwash" remains the preferred (dismissive) term with which to refer to any superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment, especially one issued by individuals or institutions whose activities remained environmentally destructive.  Constructions like "Greenspanspeak", "Greenspannian", "Greenspanistic" or "Greenspanesque" all just too much of a mouthful, Fedspeak had to do.

All the chairman’s men: Dr Greenspan and his presidents

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989).

George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993).

Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1992-2001).

George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009).

Since the Greenspan epoch, the meaning has shifted, Fedspeak now very much in the tradition of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's (1832-1898) Alice Through the Looking-Glass (the 1871 sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)) which are two of the most marvelous books ever written

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

The governors claim post-Greenspan Fedspeak is an exercise in imparting meaning in simple, plain-English with no (intended) attempt to obfuscate.