Wherefore art thou Bailout?

John McCain recently had an interesting proposal: instead of calling the revised $700+ billion financial package that’s heading from the senate to the house a ‘bailout’, we should refer to it as a ‘rescue’. This change in verbiage might provide the shift in outlook necessary for both government and public buy-in.

In other words: whereas a bailout is simply removing water from a boat, a rescue is saving that boat from the storm.

Will a little re-branding be enough to give this mammoth bill a boost? Or was Juliet right when she said, “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” (Or in this case, perhaps the expression is better updated to “that which we call a bailout by any other name would be rejected”)?

Contributed by: Maghan Cook