One of the most surprising arguments in John Kenneth Galbraith's book on the 1929 crash is his assertion that one of the most iconic images of the era, the stockbroker jumping out a window, doesn't seem to be entirely reality-based. This time around, it seems to be all too real. Adolf Merckle, apparently despondent over the fate of his family's overleveraged German business empire, has thrown himself under a train.
I wonder if what Galbraith saw in the unusually low suicide statistics for 1929 was the confounding effect of crisis. Suicide tends to fall during crises--they take peoples' minds off themselves. So perhaps everyone outside of Wall Street was too busy watching the stock market collapse to think about the mess of their own lives--but suicide rates leapt for those on center stage. Certainly, there have been quite a few highly publicized suicides so far that can be directly attributed to the declining markets, and sadly, I doubt we've seen the last.
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My mother was a 21 year old secretary in Wall Street in 1929. She entered her supervisor's office one morning and found the window open and her supervisor missing. I assume his action was entirely reality-based, for him. I know it colored my mother's reality for the rest of her life.
Even more surprising than that, Megan, is that you are such a big fan of John Kenneth Galbraith.
Suicide tends to fall during crises--they take peoples' minds off themselves.
Really? Do you have any citations or recommendations for lit on that subject?
(This is not a challenge or attempt at a troll but, rather, a point that relates to something I'm working on.)
Cool Cal,
..., especially since The New Industrial State did not arrive on schedule in 1984. However, a 25 year error may not be fatal.
Didn't suicide rates spike in Japan during their slump?
As a semi-Kraut, I can assure you that Merckle's suicide was a symptom of the common German mentality, that one should commit suicide for fear of death. Some even apply a more sanguine methodology, such as the homo lover of the cannibal Mewes a few years back, who offered himself up to be butchered and made into a freezer snack and/or jerky.
The end result is what Churchill observed: Germans are either at one's feet or at one's throat.
Some of these guys were engaged in schemes to defraud people of their retirements. For them this is the honorable thing to do, and it saves the rest of us the trouble of their prison upkeep.
Jake, Meagan is referring to work that is seen as starting with Durkheim in his statistics on suicide which showed the time of the Franco-Prussian war to be a time of reduced suicides in France. Typically authors says this event increased 'social cohesion' and reduced the risk of suicide. War is a subset of 'crisis' and to use the word 'crisis' is probably to overgeneralize.
I would think that in a time of "real" trouble, one does not have to commit suicide.
If you want to end your troubles, and it is a time of terrible war, you simply lead a hopeless charge against the enemy.
If it is a great famine, you selflessly give your remaining gruel to your children.
If it is a terrible flood, you dive into the torrent to rescue a child.
Only the comfortable and wealthy reach the stage where they have to deliberately set out to die. All else simply have to stop trying too hard to stay alive.
The added bonus of the above methods is that you might just regain consciousness to find yourself a hero, who has solved all life's problems in another way.
A brother of my grandfather found himself unable to provide for his wife and child during the Depression. He committed suicide to get life insurance for his family.
People under immense stress or depression sometimes cannot see beyond the moment.
I personally find this recession depressing. YMMV.
Meh...Not to sound like a callous asshole, but the suicides of a bunch of rich people who should have known better, suicides based on the fact that their billions are now only worth half-billions, does not figure into my list of 'Important problems facing the world today'. How many poor people died in Gaza today who didn't want to die at all?
I'm still wondering if someone is going to knock off Bernie Madoff.
OG, is it an either or proposition? If I think critically about the I/G war today, can I not also think critically about this? Does my sympathy for the families in the middle east come at the expense of those in Germany?
It's pretty obvious that shame and/or guilt not money are the driver for these suicides...Adolf wasn't going hungry or homeless anytime soon. So I guess your only other point for witholding sympathy is that 'they should have known better.'???
Will that rationale hold for the recent retiree who has yet to find out he and his wife's $500k nest egg is gone?
Suicide bomber or suicide billionaire, I'm concerned with most circumstances where a human concludes that the best thing for them and their family is suicide.
k1
Meh...Not to sound like a callous asshole...
Well; Wiseman said it; not I...
At least some of these suicides appear to be not people bemoaning that they lost their own wealth, but the weight of responsibilty due to what they lost for others.
As for "should have known better" - I and some tens of millions of other people lost a tremendous amount of wealth this past year because we didn't know any better. Alas for me and the others; we're only human.
In a given country, murder rate plus suicide rate is about the same as most other countries.
Somewhat true, but not all that true. Greece has fairly low rates of both murder and suicide.
Anyway it sounds like suicide did go up during the Depression and probably because of the Depression. It's just that it didn't go up instantly, the suicides were mostly not among the richest, and "jumping out of windows" was an unpopular way to commit suicide.
All of which makes sense. The image of people "snapping" due to some tragedy is not the usual course of events. Instead it may take months, even years, of disappointment or post-trauma for the person to reach "the breaking point." Even when they reach it they may take a couple days to settle their affairs before suicide. So really it makes since there was not a spike, or was even a decrease in, suicide immediately after the stock market dropped. It also makes sense that once things "settled in" suicide rose. It also makes sense the richest might have had some "cushion" and not been the most likely to be reduced to misery. Lastly suicides often don't want to draw attention, but jumping out of windows is a fairly "showy" way of doing the deed. And even if I'm wrong there it just makes sense that shooting one's self, or taking poison, is going to be much more common a way to commit suicide.
Still the statement, "Suicide tends to fall during crises--they take peoples' minds off themselves" might be true in a way. However if so I think it can be a temporary effect and that ultimately crises can in fact raise suicide rates.
And now Steve L. Good, the Chicago real-estate tycoon, has shot himself. Are we going to hear that Good's suicide has its roots in some sort of financial problem?
The title of this entry reminds me of the best journalistic photo I've ever seen. When I was in college, a young man committed suicide one night by jumping off of the parking garage. The morning after, the student paper's headline picture showed a facilities crew member cleaning the pavement with a water sprayer.
Is Galbraith's book still relevant? I know a lot of the analysis has been superseded as we know understand the Great Depression to have at least been triggered by monetary events (although there's a lot of dispute about why we stayed in one as long as we did and the role of the "New Deal").
This isn't a pointed question - I'm really interested to know people's opinion's of the book's value today.
Thanks.
Readers on Amazon appear to think The Great Crash remains relevant: it has been number one in the category for "Economics/Theory" -- of all things -- continuously since September.
And for what it's worth, when I happened to meet Fidel Castro six years ago, his first words were, "The Great Crash! my favorite book! I have a copy on my night-table!"
JKG was greatly amused by that at the time.
JG
@k1 - It actually kind of is an either/or proposition. The feeling and attention of an individual person (as well as, of course, TV news time) is a limited quantity, and when we are thinking about some German billionaire killing himself, we aren't thinking about all the much more serious problems facing the world today. My post says nothing about sympathy, but put into that context, I don't have sympathy for that man. If it's not the money but the shame, isn't that a tacit admission on his part that he should have known better? Finally, I'm not saying it's a good thing that people kill themselves, I'm saying that it doesn't rank on the list of world problems to which I would devote my time and attention. Maybe you can think deeply about both Gaza and billionaire suicides, but the fact is that most people can't. In fact, most people know nothing about the things that matter most. Most people can tell you a lot more about high-profile suicides and celebrity divorces than they can about stuff that matters, and it's a damn shame.
@Peg - I don't know you, and I'm not directing this to you personally, but that 'we're only human' crap doesn't fly with me, period. If you put your money into a retirement account and didn't know what was going on, then you should be ten times as pissed as me at the rich people who lost your money and should have known better. But if you (the royal 'you', not you in particular) had even the slightest awareness of what was going on with your money, then you have no excuse. A lot of people who counted on getting something for nothing are now getting nothing instead, and it's the most tired cliche in the world to say 'we're only human'. If you didn't know anything and didn't understand what you were doing, you shouldn't have gotten involved, and if you did understand then you should have understood it was all going to fail. LOTS of people did understand this: Just ask Peter Schiff.
Hey, all you clever guys! Is the Steven Good suicide going to be related to financial chicanery?
OGWiseman - seems like your point is: if you screwed up, then don't look to me for sympathy.
Fair enough.
Why then, do you cry any tears for those in Gaza who lose their lives? If they had been supportive of leaders who were willing to live in peace alongside Israel, rather than the worse-than-Nazis Hamas - perhaps more of them would be alive.
And no one should assume for this that I do not cry for the loss of life in Gaza; I guarantee you that I do. Nevertheless, I also know that those who are dying could have chosen better. They could have highly increased their odds of not dying and of having a far more superior life.
@Peg - Really? You're going to have to explain to me how the women and children dying in Gaza could have chosen better, highly increased their odds of not dying, and had a far more superior life. I don't see how that's possible, given that they were born where they are and exist in destitute poverty.
And as for the ones who could choose better? The bombers and the radicals and the fundamentalists? I don't have any sympathy for them and I wish they would all off themselves. By the way, that goes for Israeli radicals building settlements on land they don't own, as well as the Palestinian radicals blowing people up. The world would be a much better place if none of them existed.
Also, to explain my first point a little more, the reason that 'we're only human' thing irks me so much is that it's the go-to excuse for people caught with their hand in the cookie jar. When the financial wizards who brought us this crisis hadn't been discovered yet, and thought they were making everybody so much money, you never heard 'we're only human'. Then they were all geniuses and deserved to be rewarded for their vast intellect and expertise. It's only when it all goes wrong that 'we're only human' becomes in vogue, and it's self-justificatory bullshit.