A graduate student in anthropology, able to have joined my field trip of last week, would have been handed an honors dissertation topic on a platter.
For two days I was with an exotic tribe – about a hundred senior-level bankers and their governmental regulators, assembled together to perform rituals and incantations in search of illumination and enlightenment about their system’s risky and uncertain future.
The proceedings were as defined as a liturgy, in obeisance to the god of regulated capitalism. Deep within the imposing temple of our region’s Federal Reserve Bank, the devout convened in an amphitheater, all arrayed in careful and attentive rows. Dressed in the prescribed vestments – uniform grey suits and sober neckties – we gathered to receive the wisdom of the high priests and seers, as they posed at the central lectern and delivered their Gospels according to PowerPoint.
Margaret Mead among the Samoans would have felt no less an outside observer. I have not been around that much cult-like behavior or arcane and exotic jargon since my last trip to South Bend, Indiana for a Notre Dame football game.
There on autumn Saturdays, they assemble reverentially in the sacred oval arena, face the Golden Dome, ingest the ritual brew, and raise their voices to shake down the thunder from the skies.
No less, the congregation of bankers were invoking Saint Ben and Saint Tim, seeking deliverance from the last two years of darkness and agony, through the magical efficacy of TARP and TARF, successful entrail-reading of the “stress tests,” and exorcism of the bedevilings known as Basel II and Mark-to-Market.
On full display were the same tensions and stress that have beleaguered minor sects throughout history, from the Huguenots and the Pilgrims to the Mormons and the Moonies. A highly-placed risk officer at one of the truly solid institutions, spotlessly innocent herself of any role in the global carnage, bemoaned her baseless demonization by friends and neighbors as a “greedy banker.”
And there was no little sense of persecution and paranoia in the manifest wish for relief from the daily howling of the uninformed critics at CNBC and the other media, whose intrusive drum-beating may well be serving only to distract and inflame an uneasy populace.
The concern is likely justified. The taxi driver who had delivered me to the meeting recognized the address. “Since you’re not a banker,” he said, “tell them that the businesses in my neighborhood are dying. They’ve got to start lending again.”
The legendary J.P. Morgan is cited for the story that it was time to become seriously worried about the markets when he was offered stock tips by his shoeshine boy. A cabbie is likewise an unlikely strategist on financial rescue plans. So the likelihood of populist street sentiment contributing to success in the current environment must be slight indeed.
Still – dim in the memory of an undergraduate lecture hall, I recall learning of the “cargo cults.” Isolated Micronesian peoples responded to the god-like appearance of airplanes dropping blessings from the skies, by re-creating avatars out of bamboo and thatch, donning head-sets carved from coconuts, and lighting bonfires to guide the expected parachutes. With these rituals they would pray for the continued benevolent intercession of the gleaming new deities -- with, it must be conceded, a conspicuous lack of results.
In today’s troubled context, the degree of resemblance is ominous. We who are non-initiate observers can do little but hope for the best.
Thanks for joining this dialog. Please share with your friends and colleagues. And if not a subscriber, you are invited to join at the Home page – free, easy and non-commercial.
Comments