The cult of personality

Elinore Longobardi of the Columbia Journalism Review writes about how the business media continues to look for saviors despite the continued economic turmoil.

Longobardi writes, “In times of great troubles, it is natural to look for a savior, someone who can get us out of trouble with a wave of the hand and a confident smile.

“The business media is like that. It is never ceases to look for — and find! — saviors of corporations, investment banks, even the entire financial system, despite the fact that these dear leaders, one by one, invariably, inevitably, fail. In this, they remind us of members of certain Hasidic sects, who, impatient for the coming of the Messiah, are given to chanting: ‘We want Moshiach NOW!’

“The birth and death of false idols in the business press is a strange and important phenomenon. Strange because it keeps happening. Important because it is a symptom of a serious weakness in coverage. It reflects the fact that the press is clinging to an old narrative, built around Wall Street Masters of the Universe.

“This narrative persists despite the fact that recent events have demonstrated that the system suffers from fundamental flaws no lone individual can fix. And thus, while never ideal, this habit is now especially pernicious. To think that any one person can right a corporation as drenched in subprime as Merrill is to fundamentally misunderstand the financial crisis.”

Read more here.