"Aftershock" or Shockwave? What Comes After the Next Bear Wave

Etoile Brilliant submits:

Now that we have seen that the Fed will act as the lender of last resort for all and sundry (regardless, in the case of Bear Stearns (BSC), whether they have paid their dues or not), pundits have been scrambling for their dictionary looking for words that describe the next bear wave driven by the consumer downturn and the resulting loss of earnings. "Aftershock" seems to be the word de jour (for example, see the headline of Stephen Roach's article in yesterday's FT).

Let's not deal in semantics, but even Chambers Online defines aftershock as "a small earthquake that follows the main shock of a large earthquake... ." If commentators think that the follow-through will be small in comparison to the main shock, they've another thing coming. The word they should be reaching for is "shockwave," as in nuclear explosion. Using the nuclear analogy, let's just complete the picture.

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