The danger of a banker with a power complex

There is no petrol in the state of Tennessee. And for the first time in four years, the Dow Jones has fallen below the critical 10,000 mark. In London, too, shares fell yesterday to a four-year low. In short, panic has set in with the result that people are buying feverishly or not at all.

Our word 'panic' comes from the Greek god, Pan, the herdsman, who was famous for being able to inspire fear and disorder among people. The Olympian victory over the assault of the Titans was attributed to Pan's power to create a 'panic'. Whoever falls under the spell of a 'panic' is in serious trouble.
 
The collapse of the financial markets has created a worldwide panic with inevitable repercussions. Even those who may be relatively untouched by what is going on have cause to worry. Individuals and institutions express their panic in one of two ways ­ with strikingly similar effects. There is the lemming-like behaviour in which, pressed to survive, the individual will carry on regardless of the circumstances, continuing to be active until he has actually jumped off the cliff into the icy waters to reach the other side. A perilous decision but one that is, ironically, in keeping with the way many financial institutions are run. In retrospect, Lehman Brothers' plummet seems to fall into just this kind of category.
 
There is a well-established ethos in the City that is at the core of free market capitalism which is to be active, to produce, to acquire, to grow, to be in control. In short, it is to be powerful. The ones who get to the top are often ­ or at least, so the mythology goes, ­ the ones who are most driven and ruthless and, significantly, most active. They do more deals, make more money, and increasingly take more risks. We are now seeing this spiral unravelling with a trajectory just as breathtaking as its rise.

When those who are most driven and who are most anxious about staying in control face imminent danger, the reaction is more often than not to do something - in other words, to continue to drive on even harder. There are plenty of examples of investors who suddenly pull out of their rapidly dwindling investments and gamble on dark horses and back runners only to lose the lot. They wave their arms around to show how much they are achieving in the midst of a crisis and we can see many of them waving their arms as they race towards the cliff's edge and fall off. In fact, it makes one wonder whether all this phallic behaviour has not been a major contributing factor in what may be the demise of capitalism as we know it.
 
The other reaction we are witnessing is perhaps more subtle but every bit as destructive. This is the individual who feels that the collapse of the market reflects his own failure and ineptitude and who voluntarily offers himself as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of financial recovery. Or, in other words, in anticipation of being laid off, this is the individual who offers to resign. We could call this the inverse lemming position.

The lemming in the first instance tries to allay his fears and those of others by becoming even more active in the deluded idea that he can reverse the trend by running even harder. The inverse lemming, on the other hand, is equally omnipotent in his thinking but it takes the form of overwhelming responsibility and guilt that can only be alleviated by diving over the cliff ­ but this time by walking backwards.
 
Fortunately, not everyone in the financial world behaves like lemmings. There are some who manage to keep their heads amid the panic and lie in wait without having to do something to prove they are potent. But this is a position that requires a certain degree of passivity which in itself is antithetical not only to the culture concerned but also extremely hard to maintain in the face of an adrenaline rush.

Being passive does not mean doing nothing. It means keeping a space open in our minds to observe what is happening and to think until the time is right to act. Then we can engage with the crisis rather than being driven to the brink by it, as captives of Pan. ·