President’s Obama’s Ark

President's Obama's Ark

Now that President Obama has warned over and over that this economic crisis could turn into a “catastrophe” if Congress doesn’t act quickly on a stimulus package, I’m trying to get an image in my head of what “catastrophe” means.

The Oxford English Dictionary led me to a synonym – “cataclysm.” And right there at the top of “cataclysm” in the Oxford English Dictionary is this sentence: “A great and general flood of water, a deluge; esp. the Noachian deluge, the Flood.”

The ultimate example of a catastrophe or cataclysm may very well be the story of Noah and The Flood. Genesis 6:5 – 8:22. We are already experiencing a flood of job losses. Nearly 600,000 jobs cut last month, following a similar number in December, certainly qualifies as a deluge. As President Obama said accurately, our economic problems “are accelerating, not decelerating.”

Some Republican opponents of the stimulus plan say they’re more worried about a different kind of flood – a flood of taxpayer dollars being spent in ways that are not guaranteed to work – a flood of debt passed down to our children. That’s a legitimate fear that must be addressed. But there’s no questioning the flood we face right now.

 

Michael Schulder: From a Researcher at ABC News; To a Writer at The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour on PBS; To my five years as a Writer for Peter Jennings at ABC World News Tonight; And 17 years as a Senior Executive Producer at CNN.

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