When in the midst of 2010, due to an imminent threat for a bailout, the word Portugal showed up much more than usual in newsstreams in the four corners of the world, that was an occasion for several overseas friends and fellows to get back in touch with me to curiously certify whether the economic and social situation really was a bad as reported.
In an attempt to picture the events to a distant outsider, I sought comparison of another drastic event in world news earlier that year, which was the earthquacke in Haiti. Clearly with no intent to compare the devastation and misfortune to a population, I sought to illustrate that if (public) finance crises, like earthquackes are both constantly monitored in known risk areas, what makes every difference to people's lives is the ability of a government led action to respond when disaster does indeed hit.
In the first 48 hours after the Haiti earthquacke nearly no foreign aid had came in because of the uncontrolled responsiveness of the local authorities. And so it was in Portugal, plain panic as if some alien force was about to strike, drove politicians, institutions, private enterprise and the general public in all kinds of opposite directions, generating a nationwide paralisation, which was exactly the last thing the country needed.
I have to admit I admire, envy, the apparent serene determined manner in which the entire United States put in a motion a preventive plan to fence against the threat of approaching hurricane Sandy. Any person from some woodpanel manufacturer pulling in extra workers to accelerate production and distribution to a functioning top down, bottom up alert and civil aid system no to mention the policing of temporarily abandoned properties .... under the circumstances it just seems to work and whatever the real extent of the disaster, in a matter of days a nation will move on with a general feeling that they have done as much as was possible to mitigate a common threat.
It is that practical spirit that will confine a disaster to its minimum potential. I would not want to imagine the aftermath without it.
When public interest and knowledge towards tropical storms evolved, we substituted scientific and technical locators with female names, by the example of what heroic (male) seafarers had been doing for centuries. Somehow it would seem that for whom is in an unavoidable hitspot for surrounding stormy wheather, the idea that what's imminent is a female figure will make it easier to cope.
So I would suggest that we substitute the range of technical financial and political terminology that crises hit populations have to have come to read about daily, with sweet or passionate female names and that we do so in the early stage, before a tropical storm either evaporates or turns into a hurricane category 1 - 5.
Imagine if in 1996 Spain would have baptized its accelarating property development sector with, say "Carmen" or "Mercedes" than we would all know in 2003 - when private lending vs per capita income was reaching concerning high's- and again in 2008 when bank capitalization was becoming worrysome low, then in 2012 we would all know "she" was now a vibrant teenager on her way of becoming a grown woman with a mind of her own. Who knows, we may get tempted to have her stick around for a long love hate relationship or just maybe shut the door in her face any given day.
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