Saniel Bonder

On Macro-Economics and Macro-Egos, Hubris and Humiliation

In an earlier post I addressed the curious X-factor, identified by no less an economic wizard than Alan Greenspan, that apparently skews even the most sophisticated financial forecasting today. The culprit? The macro- (collective) and micro- (individual) emotional swings of the buying and selling public. To date, alas, these swings still elude anything like reliable modeling and prediction.

That was several months ago, before Bear Stearns, before Fannie and Freddie, and, now, before Lehman. Also, let’s note, before the Beijing Olympics and the surrounding hubbub related to Tibet. And, before Georgia. In the meantime something else macro has more visibly reared its head and is destroying so much of what matters to so many:

Macro-egos—both individual and collective.

Some of the recent all-stars who stand out only because their karmas have come home to roost more than others’:

• Jimmy Cayne, the Bear Stearns CEO, such a literal gambler that he couldn’t be bothered to break away from the bridge tournament table and come home and fight for his company’s life in time to save it.
• Dick Fuld, the chief of Lehman. My heart goes out to the man—he gave so much of his life to that company. But some kind of pride made it impossible for him to take lowball offers that might have kept Lehman alive. And now look at the price that so many are paying.

I say “some kind” of pride because there may be more going on here than massive personal swell-headedness. Could there be massive collective swell-headedness? Perhaps on top of, or masking, massive collective something else?

Try a couple of other examples, on the national rather than corporate plane:

• Recent analyses of what keeps China so outraged about Tibet tell us that the country has enshrined its wounded pride into a policy of remembered pain: since the Boxer Rebellion, it’s suffered now over “One Hundred Years of Humiliation” at the hands of Western and other world powers. Until those encountering and contending with China take these many humiliations, including its perceived territorial loss of Tibet, into account, no amount of Western business and political rapprochement will ever touch the wound of the Chinese soul—collective and individual. And our outrage at their actions only fuels their indignation. I’m saying this as a spiritual teacher who treasures the immense contribution of Tibetan Buddhism to world spirituality, admires the Dalai Lama deeply, and, yes, is outraged at what China has inflicted on the Tibetan people, culture, and land. We don’t understand what the Chinese feel. Period. And we’d better get down to it.

Under what we see as spiritless hubris—humiliation.

• Same, strangely, in Russia. This month’s “Vanity Fair” features a bone marrow-chilling account of the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, now prime minister but obviously still in supreme command. The title says a lot: “Dead Soul.” If we’re to take this story at face value, the man is almost a perfect incarnation of the heartlessness of the old KGB, as if brought back from the dead by a bizarre sequence of events. He now appears to be ruling Russia with a dictatorial iron fist that wasn’t possible even in the post-Stalin Soviet era, when the Communist Party and the KGB made for a de facto two-party system while each continually vied for supremacy. Immense hubris in the man, yes. Yet underneath it, sure enough, there are both personal humiliations of his own early life and his identification with humiliations endured by the KGB, the Party, indeed the whole Russian nation, in the breakup of the Soviet Union. All of which comes roiling to the surface when anyone crosses him—whether a now-apparently-terminated journalist or the president of a once-Russian province like Georgia.

Does a pattern emerge here? Part of the tragedy of Dick Fuld’s story is how he had a major role pulling Lehman Bros. phoenix-like out of an earlier pile of near ashes, when the bank almost folded about a decade ago. The company he so utterly identified with for so long, which has been so legendary for its fighting spirit, had then been so deeply humiliated. How much harder did his loyal, proud identification with all that history make it for Fuld to see the writing on the wall over the last several months?

Macro-economics, global, national, and corporate, is still at the mercy of macro-egos, national, corporate, and individual. All of which in turn revolve around cycles of greed ranging from euphoria to panic, and of self-absorption ranging from hubris to humiliation, and back again. Again and again. If not those exact poles of emotion—or profound imbalances in the spirit, temper, and display of our humanity—then others very like them.

These primitive emotional swings are not necessary in today’s world. They can be outgrown and, even when they crop up, neutralized by balancing wisdom and agreements. Great numbers of psychological and spiritual counselors and governance experts today have the understanding and skills to help such leaders—and their boards of directors, their cabinet officers, their legislatures and their executive staffs—understand, outgrow, and henceforth avoid these kinds of tragic pitfalls.

The problem is the vast cultural splits that separate one kind of understanding and power from the other. The macro-egos controlling power and money in human affairs simply aren’t available to learn these humbling lessons and submit to such constraints. And those who well understand emotion, spirit, and appropriate checks and balances for managing excesses, aren’t willing or able to rein them in, and then teach them and help them grow. Plus, most of us have our own macro-egos. It’s as if we all live in parallel universes. But we don’t. We’re all right here on this increasingly tiny planet.

In this column I specifically address the universal human disjunction I call “the Spirit/Money split.” Lest you think money doesn’t necessarily come into play in the more political situations mentioned above, just recall, or google and find out, how much American national and corporate debt paper is now in Chinese hands.

And you may not have heard that Vladimir Putin is rumored to be worth about forty billion dollars—yes, that’s four-zero, $40 billion—mostly commandeered from oligarchs and their companies that he’s said to have taken an iron fist to. And, we’re told, mostly sequestered away in top-secret, Western financial institutions, like Swiss banks.

Meantime, just as I’m finishing writing this post, today’s “Financial Times” news brief headline: “Russian equities fall as much as 20 per cent,” their steepest one-day tumble in more than a decade. Largely traceable to whom? Feeling what and acting on it?

© Saniel Bonder 2008. All rights reserved.

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 About Saniel: Harvard educated “destiny-empowerment” expert, Saniel is author of the forthcoming audio series, "Wealth Without Guilt," the provocative "White-Hot Yoga of the Heart," and many other books and programs. He hails from Sonoma, California where his unique blend of intellectual curiosity and spiritual wisdom is honed and nurtured. Saniel co-writes and co-teaches with his wife, Linda. Together they travel and teach “materiality and spirit” workshops throughout the US and internationally.