Note from the author: If you are easily offended, this social satire will likely succeed.

Every great disaster needs a name and it’s high time that we got on with naming this one. The sooner we name it, the sooner we can begin to put it in the rear view mirrors of our Toyota Hybrids. In fact, some enterprising souls might even be able to prosper from it.  The mind reels at the marketing opportunities.  I see sweatshirts and t-shirts.  Cool new logo wear, infomercials, evangelists and support groups.  But before the merchandising starts, we definitely need a cool name.

I’ve checked on the rules of naming disasters, and I can’t find any.  Someone somewhere is responsible for naming economic and natural disasters, but it’s a bit fuzzy as to which governmental office has the final say so.  The folks that dispense hurricane names refuse to take ownership of economic storms.

Around Chicago, we lay claim to: The Great Chicago Fire, The Eastland Disaster, The Iroquois Theatre, the 1968 Democratic National Convention (yep, it was  a true social and civic disaster) and the Chicago Cubs.

I suspect that it is a bit unconventional to name your disaster while you are living through it, but what the heck.  I doubt that our grandparents (and great grandparents for you generation Y’ers) referred to the economic calamity that launched with Black Thursday in 1929  by the label: The Great Depression until much later, but we can learn from their mistakes. Oh, and one point of clarification for those not up on ancient twentieth century history, Black Thursday was not a big shopping extravaganza like our more modern Black Friday on the day after Thanksgiving.

We still refer to the end of the insane phase of the late 1990’s as The Dot Com Bubble, and most associate that time with a period when we all momentarily lost our minds about most things including the laws of physics and economics.  Profits were tertiary, eyeballs were king and anyone with a ridiculous idea to spend money on something wrapped in a techno-buzzword could obtain financing.  The brand…Dot Com Bubble has meaning and staying power.

I’m generally not allowed to name things, and my good friend Mike who occasionally reads this (you know who you are), is also not allowed to name anything either.  We both come up with lousy ideas.  However, in the hopes of jump-starting the brainstorming, here are some thought-starters:

We’ve got the perfect storm (hey, that’s not bad, but it’s taken) of calamities hitting at the same time.  The mass collapse of the world’s formerly strongest capital markets; a housing market crash of remarkable proportions, the dissolution of Wall Street, the evaporation of our auto industry, the collapse of consumer spending, the biggest holiday season shopping disaster in 40 or more years, accelerating retail and corporate bankruptcies, remarkable greed on display, audacious con-men in play and the open market sale of a senate seat by an insane governor.

The popular press is even jumping on board. Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article that predicts the end of the United States during 2010. And from the school of I’m not sure where I heard it, some survey reported that more Americans are resorting to sex as a low cost entertainment alternative to shopping or dining out.  I didn’t realize it had gone out of fashion when times were good.  (Hey, I never claimed this was a family blog.)

All in all, these are powerful attributes to build a brand around.  For right now, I’m going with the: The Great Purge. Or maybe, The Great Bailout, or The Great What Were We Thinking?

OK, I’ll quit trying to do something I’m no good at.  You come up with the name.  I’m busy lining up my foreign sources for the logo-wear.  Call me when you’ve got the name and I’ll place the orders.  We can donate a percent of the profits to Congress to support the pay raise that they just voted themselves.