Accord Advisory Group

The Irish, in their euphemistic wisdom, have a term for our shared, global situation: “The CEC”. The term seems to have originated in the early years of this millennium, as the Celtic Tiger began its run; and judging from the bitterness about the CEC on blogs from that time, it must have begun as a positively upbeat notion: lending to the current use of the term a deliciously sardonic and bitter undertone: like a neat Jameson on a rainy day.

Today’s “current economic climate” neatly dovetails with the acronym-driven short-hand of the corporate world. Indeed, the term CEC confers C-Suite status upon our depressingly recessive times: elevating the global economy to Olympian heights along with the Gods of the FT and WSJ: the CEO, CFO, COO, CTO, and CLO.

The difference between CEC as current economic climate and current economic condition may reflect the critical dimension of culpability: hey, this situation is NOT MY FAULT!!!!! Like global warming, economic climate change cannot be a condition. That would make it problematic. Heaven forfend ! Fault, after all, might be intuited from a word like “condition”. Rather, climate, tiptoeing through our lives with its foggily obscure origins, wafts over passive humanity, reminding us of umbrellas and mukluks and the odd tsunami. Not a condition at all, but a climate: like rock ‘n’ roll, ignorance, and intolerance, here to stay.

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