"Boom" has exactly four letters, but that is not what makes it a metaphoric four-letter word. Its premature use in the past has raised so many false hopes as to give it a Herbert Hooverish ring. Saying it out loud now might well give such offense to the 8.3 million Americans still looking fruitlessly for jobs as to qualify the word as politically incorrect. So, even after the biggest one-month drop in the unemployment rate in 10 years, economists, business and government officials resolutely refuse even to whisper "boom."
Then how do those officials describe what is going on? "Moving in...