These are depressing times but it is distressing to see how many financiers and business people affected by the credit crisis are being driven to suicide.

One public case occurred before Christmas when Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, a French fund-of-funds manager based in New York, killed himself after investing $1.4bn of client money (apparently including $50m of his own) with Bernard Madoff.

Today brought news of the suicide of Adolf Merckle, a 74-year-old billionaire and one of Germany’s richest men, after his business empire unravelled. Steven Good, a real estate executive, also appears to have shot himself near Chicago.

I heard about the latter cases after reading the thoughtful and sobering column by James  Altucher in the US edition of the FT this morning:

In the past two weeks I have heard of two people who took their lives: one was a 27-year-old stockbroker with two children, and the other, a cousin of a friend of mine, was a hedge fund manager also with children. And there was the horrifying death of Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet.

In mid-October, at the peak of the financial crisis, the phrase “suicide methods” suddenly rose to a multi-year high on Google Trends, which tracks how often words or phrases have been searched on Google. (Its service Google Flu Trends, for example, tracks flu epidemics from search queries.) The “suicide” spike continued into December. If Google Trends is to be believed, it seems the suicide epidemic has started

I can’t help but think: “There but for the grace of God go I.” Not because I entertain those thoughts but because of the pain of losing money, one’s reputation and relationships with investors, family and friends. And all because of poor money decisions.

I think he is right to emphasise the loss of reputation and feelings of self-worth that often accompany financial loss and can drive people to suicide. It is understandable and very sad. There but for the grace of God go the rest of us, indeed.

Happily, there are still a few people able to treat disaster as an impostor. I am thinking of Alexandra Penney, who lost her life savings to Madoff but is keeping a defiant diary of her social and financial come-down on The Daily Beast.

January 6, 2009 10:25pm in Finance | Comment