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Home > Window on Washington > Archives > 2008 > October > 24 > Entry
Time to unthaw the economy?
Perhaps you’ve heard by now that President Bush sometimes botches the language.
We now have evidence that it is contagious.
On Monday, in Alexandria, Louisiana, Bush said this about the economy:
“Now, we’ve got a long way to go. As I said on Friday, you know, this thaw … it took a while to thaw; it’s going to take a while to unthaw.”
Well actually, what happened was credit availability froze and Bush meant it will take some time for it to thaw. Unthaw, one would guess, is the opposite of thaw. Unthaw would not be what you might want to happen to something that froze.
But now Bush has White House Press Secretary Dana Perino talking about unthawing.
Tuesday: “What we’re going to focus on here in the administration, the government, is getting this $700 billion rescue package under way and implemented so that we can unthaw the credit markets and start to see people lending to one another again, and that should help solve a lot of the problems.”
Thursday: “The best thing that we can do to try to help them is to implement this rescue package, unthaw the credit freeze, and get money moving again so we can return this nation on a path to job growth.”
Friday: “One, the credit markets froze up. And once that happened, no one was willing to lend to one another. Interbank lending was coming to a standstill. And we started to see that unthaw a little bit so that money can start moving through the system.”
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