I must admit that I am fascinated with semantics – the study of the evolution in the meaning of words. As we struggle to get out of the current economic crisis the English language is being enriched with scores of new words – usually coined by politicians or journalists – as well as with new meanings attached to established words.

Some may consider that laughing at the hardship that so many people are going through is cruel gallows humour. But one thing we certainly need in these difficult times is a dose of humour and self-depreciation. The Irish are perhaps the world’s experts in this type of humour and they certainly need to excel in this social skill to ease the enormous pain they are being subjected to.

The A-word has certainly been the most used and abused word in this recession. I am, of course, referring to “austerity” that has acquired a new meaning in the political and economic strategy vocabulary. Some politicians define “austerity” as a useful tool to strengthen the country’s economy for future growth. Other politicians that are more interested in improving their ratings in opinion polls tell the electorate that they should be grateful for being saved from nasty austerity thanks to their government’s good economic governance.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is insisting that investors in sovereign bonds should get a “haircut”. She is not really interested in investors’ grooming habits, but rather on the urgency to shift some of the responsibility for rescuing bankrupt governments, like those in Greece and Ireland, from taxpayers to risk-happy investors who lend to irresponsible governments. By taking a “haircut” on their investment, sovereign bond holders will hopefully be more careful to which governments they lend in future.

One of my favourite neologisms is “frugalista” – one who makes being frugal a virtue. Making a virtue out of necessity was always a wise attitude when things got tough. Our minster responsible for transport will probably be hoping that there are many frugalistas amongst us who will decide to use public transport more as from next year to prove that the transport reforms were really well conceived and even better executed.

The Maltese obsession with investment in property is proverbial and it takes more than a few hundred investors being hurt by investing in the wrong fund to change this attitude. Many genuinely believe that in Malta we are different from others and that a “housing bubble” is a disease to which our economy is immune. What a “housing bubble” really means in that your house is worth much less than you really think.

So, many will continue to live in denial and declare that our property market is not going through “brickor mortis” – a period of difficult times in the housing industry. Our property developers are trying to cope with “brickor mortis” by being “shovel ready” - waiting for funding from banks to start new construction projects that can restore their profitability.

The problem is that respectable international organisations, like the IMF, in their very diplomatic style, tell us that this is not really a very good solution. They see a threat to our future prosperity if we do not handle well the issue of a huge vacant property overhang. The issue becomes more worrying as most of our banks that have weathered the economic crisis so well seem to be overexposed to the property market.

Seeing the writing on the wall, property developers have for some time been clamouring for a “bailout” even if they never used this ugly word. A “bailout” is what the money businesses expect from taxpayers after developers have run themselves into the ground.

Luckily the government did not need to “bailout” any of our banks and this explains why our short-term economic performance has been respectable. We did, however, have to dish out a significant loan to contribute to the “bailout” of Greece, a friend in need in the eurozone hoping that we will never see this favour reciprocated.

I always look for green shoots as the first rains turn our countryside from the scorched brown of summer to the luscious green of autumn. But the Federal Reserve chairman gave a new twist to the meaning of “green shoots” in 2009. “Green shoots” is now used by politicians and financial journalists to describe “the new indications of economic recovery”.

I take this occasion to wish all our readers a very happy Christmas and a successful 2011.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com