Credit crunch: Is it a pig in a python or more a platypus bottom?

Credit crunch? That's so two weeks ago. The phrase is no longer in any way sufficient to describe the plunging and surging of the financial markets.

It's clear that we need a new socio-economic phrase to capture where we're at in late October 2008. One that says unemployment's up, petrol prices down, inflation's up, stock markets down, a bit up and then down again, and also evokes our (probably deluded) post-bottomed-out vibe, not to mention the fact we didn't get sucked down Cern's teeny black hole as feared but must continue hoeing life's stony row.

Ideally we need two words. Alliteration optional. Onomatopoeiac if possible. The phrase should be agnostic about whether we've got further to go down the slough of despond or are poised to rise up the maidenhead of good cheer, if that isn't too sexist. Which it probably is. It mustn't be one of those annoying oxymorons like negative growth. Or as apocalyptic as meltdown. Or as bland as crisis. Also, we can't use the word recession - which is sometimes defined as a GDP decline for two or more consecutive quarters. Whatever we're in, it's not that bad yet. Nor depression, which is more painful and last longer than a recession, and, these days, is likely to be globalised.

"The financial world teems with creative jargon," says double-threat lexicographer Susie Dent, who has not only worked on Countdown for ages but also has a book called Words of the Year. "'Pig in a python' is a surge in a statistic, for example. 'Opening the kimono' is when a business is completely transparent," she says. That's too sexually graphic for our purposes, I fear.

There's also platypus bottom, coined recently by improbably-surnamed Wall Street guru Art Cashin. Do platypuses even have bottoms? Cashin explains: "It [the platypus] breathes air but spends lots of time under water." So what does that have to do with stock markets? "Well, the recent action has many conflicting and paradoxical signs related to bottoms." Cashin also talks about "V-shaped bottoms", which shows that, whatever he knows about finance, his grasp of bottoms is rudimentary. Only Fiscal Camel Toe could be dafter, Art.

None of this is helping, but I like the animal allusions.

"Heard of boiling frog syndrome?" asks Susie Dent helpfully. "It's when water is heated so slowly that the frog doesn't notice, whereas if you throw a frog into boiling water it will leap out. It's to do with unnoticed changes."

How vile. Dent later emails me another possible: "Monetary muffin top (from belt-tightening; you'll know that a muffin top is the fleshy tummy that hangs out over the top of an extra-tight belt)." I like it, Susie, I like it: topical, alliterative, with a suggestion of consumerist gorging restrained by the leather strap of prudent finance.

So from Monday we're suffering from a Worldwide Monetary Muffin Top, OK?