What have Mephistopheles and the financial markets got in common? A lot, according to Lothar Märkl, a private banker at Bank Hofmann in Zurich. A recent advertisement for the bank in the Financial Times touts Märkl as a "profound authority on Goethe's Faust" with a "particular flair for philosophical topics".
No kidding. In fact he has written his own version: Der Finanzfaust, a serious work - not a spoof, his colleague George Blum insists - closely based on Goethe's masterpiece. Whether that assists Märkl in his work is an open question.
Here's Mephisto in the Börsenküche - a variation of Goethe's witches' kitchen (loosely translated):
Slumps, catastrophes and crises,
Blindly mirrored by stock prices
Crashing, correcting and then falling
While the scribblers with their scrawling
Explain the what and how and why
The signs escaped our eagle eye.
But their judgement still is sought
Even though it counts for nought
Why? It pulls the punters in.
Devil of Profit, I have to grin.
Oh how the data lies and lies
Before the audit's very eyes
Every single forecast wrong
Yet commissions roll along,
In this game you'll come to see
Truth is the first casualty.
[Märkl translated]
David Shirreff