Zeitgeist analysis, 22 March 2009

One move this week dominates all others. If you've had a glance at the word cloud already, you might have seen it (just above and left of centre).

That single move is the astonishing rise from position 460 (with 110 occurrences) last week, to position 7 (with a stunning 1,027 occurrences) of - drum roll please - AIG!

I guess I'm behind the curve as I have not mentioned it at all since...well, actually three times this month. Still, I'm below average (the figures average out as 2.5 times per blog in the last week). Perhaps I'm not choked up with anger enough.

Related movements: bonuses straight in at number 37 after not featuring at all in previous weeks (and bonus singular similarly in at 287). American, International and Group are all reasonably strong, though American is actually down, so must have been appearing in some other context last week.

Other movements at the top of the charts: financial is down one to 3, government up three to 4, US up four to 5, market down three places to 6, money up six to 8, and people down three to 9.

Below that, tax is up 17 places to 14, price up 7 to 17 and billion up 9 to 18. For that matter, million is up 39 to number 33 and trillion is up 96 to 263.

Federal is up 146 to number 38 and Fed up 188 to 50. Reserve only features at position 238 (though still up over 300 places). Geithner and bailout are both appearing around number 300 after not featuring last week (Bernanke too, though further down the list).

Other words appearing from nowhere are Goldman, payments, received, taxpayer and party. Please don't draw any conclusions from that as I have been slightly selective in picking those ones out of the 191 newly appearing words. It may, however, be notable that in previous weeks only around 100-110 new words have entered the list. This week it's been shaken up a bit more than that.

One very notable new entry is quantitative at position 851 with 86 occurrences.

Energy is up 81 places to 23, Obama back into the top 100 at 67, and Treasury up 94 at 69. Oil is starting to creep back up at position 52; I wonder whether there is a correlation between its price and its showing in this list.

In the public sector, House, Congress and Senate are all up substantially, as are administration, policy, national, law and States. On the other hand, so are business and businesses, markets and firms, and private.

Comments

missmarketcrash said…
Are "maybe" and "think" new?
23 March 2009 at 08:48
Leigh Caldwell said…
maybe is new, with 139 occurrences (65 last week wasn't enough to get it on the list). But think is down 19 places from 12 to 31, so there was actually more thinking last week.
23 March 2009 at 13:05
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