LAUSR

In 2014 the award winning author John Lanchester argued in his book How to Speak Money 1 that the global financial crash had occurred partly because most of us have little understanding of finance, especially of its professional terminology and jargon. But he also acknowledged that, while jargon can be lazily or deliberately obfuscating and can exclude the public, it can also provide precise, succinct shorthand that’s much harder to explain in plain English. Among his glossary were “derivatives markets,” “consumer surplus,” “short selling,” “Laffer curve,” and “VIX index.” Search these online, and they require lengthy explanations in plain English, with further definitions of the terms used to describe them. For instance, a derivative is “a contract that derives its value …