Abstract

"'JUMP! You F**kers!' Narratives About Bankers in the Aftermath of Financial Crises"

Per H. Hansen, Copenhagen Business School (phh.mpp@cbs.dk)

In this paper, I discuss how societies make sense of top echelon bankers during boom and bust. I argue that bankers are often construed as superstars, masters of the universe, during a boom, only to be narrated as villains when a boom turns to bust. In much economic and sociological research this post-financial crisis process is often described as harmful scapegoating distracting focus from real institutional or systemic issues. Still, the process is a fact of life, and from a cultural perspective it might be argued that it is a necessary way for societies of dealing with crisis and scandal. In this paper I zoom in on a few bankers from the interwar period to examine how the process of sensemaking unfolded before and after the bust. I focus in particular on two highly prominent bankers in their respective countries, the Danish Emil Glückstadt of Landmandsbanken, which failed in 1922, and the German Jakob Goldschmidt of the Danatbank, which failed in July 1931. This paper is a pilot for a larger book project examining eight bankers from four different countries and two time periods, the interwar period and the 2000s.