An association with the Olympics used to be something that companies boasted about. Following protests by campaigners critical of China’s behaviour in Tibet and Sudan, exposure to this year’s games has the potential to be a public relations millstone, however.

In today’s FT, for instance, Neville Isdell, the chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola, lays out his defence of the soft drink maker’s involvement in the Beijing Olympics. Without addressing the recent unrest in Tibet, he says Coke has for two years been “actively engaged” in Darfur, the war-torn province of Sudan.

China has been criticised for its ties to the Sudanese government, whose forces and allied militia have been held responsible for killings and other atrocities in Darfur. Mr Isdell claims it is wrong - and fruitless - to extend that criticism to those seeking to profit from the Beijing games. “Criticism of Olympic sponsors from well-intentioned people will not stop the violence in Darfur,” he declares, preferring to highlight Coke’s work in backing clean water projects in Sudan.

Professors at Wharton have been analysing the dilemma facing Olympic sponsors on the business school’s website. Witold Henisz, a professor who studies political risk management, says:

Corporations that want to sponsor the Games have to navigate the political undercurrents… but they can only do something that will not offend China. That’s a very delicate balance to strike, and it requires enormous diplomatic skill.

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“What, me worry?”, asked the cheerfully gap-toothed and freckle-faced Alfred E. Neumann from the front cover of Mad magazine all through my youth. I wonder how long his outlook would last if he spent any time reading today’s newspapers.

Last week, for example, my colleague Martin Wolf took us through Professor Nouriel Roubini’s “12 steps to financial ruin” scenario, a scarily plausible account of how the world could be facing a deep US recession soon. By step eight I had to take a time-out and head to the canteen for a doughnut. What, me worry? You betcha.

On returning home later that same day I finally opened a threateningly bulky package that had been sitting by the front door for a few days and, guess what? Panic-relief was at hand.

The padded envelope contained a book called Just Enough Anxiety, which, its sub-heading informed me, is “the hidden driver of business success”. The cover of the book shows a rubber band being stretched – not too much of course – by a mystery pair of hands. The not terribly subtle point being made by the use of this image is that people (and organisations) are a bit like rubber bands: we have to be stretched to perform a useful function, but stretch us too far and we will snap.

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