Alphabetic fathoming of financial crisis

Now that the G20 has concluded its summit meeting in Pittsburg, the world seems to be breathing a collective sigh of relief. After all, the G20 summit promised to reform, at least to some extent to start with, the international financial system by slightly enlarging the shares of the developing countries in the World Bank and the IMF. However, the United States has not promised any meaningful reform of its domestic financial system. This is enough reason for concern.

As a matter of fact, in describing the current status of the global financial crisis and forecasting whether and when the world will get out of it, many economists have been reduced to simple alphabetic fathoming, producing forecasts like the L-scenario (going down and staying there); the V-scenario (going down and coming up); the W-scenario (going down and coming up, and going down again and coming up again); and even the I-scenario (going down and forever going down, supposedly mentioned by some ultra-pessimistic Russian scholars). Of course, simple signs like the upward-slash /-scenario (going upward forever) and the downward-slash \\-scenario (going downward forever) are supposedly so unlikely that they have not been evoked at all.

In recent weeks, tentative signs seem to indicate that some economies are recovering from the brink of utter disaster. Although there may still be many pains to suffer, the world seems to have finally avoided an all-out financial Armageddon. Or so it seems.